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Rock meets classical: ‘a waste of talent and electricity’?
Music journalist Stuart Maconie meets legendary 60s rock musicians who ventured into the unchartered territory of classical composition. He speaks to keyboard wizards Keith Emerson of Emerson Lake and Palmer (ELP) and classically trained Rick Wakeman as well as Jon Lord of Deep Purple in his last recorded interview before his death in July of this year. Jon Lord’s pioneering Concerto for Rock Group and Orchestra was one of the earliest marriages of rock and classical music and paired Deep Purple with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969, under the baton of Malcolm Arnold.