This is an Enhanced CD which contains regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.

Personnel includes: Deep Purple, London Symphony Orchestra, Ronnie James Dio, Sam Brown, Eddie Hardin.

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, London, England on September 25 & 26, 1999.

This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.

This 1999 two-disc live set features the long-running heavy metallurgists with high-class symphonic backing, in a program of new songs, old favorites. The album's centerpiece is keyboardist Jon Lord's 1969 composition "Concerto for Group and Orchestra." Lord's influences are wide-ranging--a little Aaron Copland, a little Charles Ives, a little Bela Bartok, and a lot of movie music. There are traces of both Bernard Herrmann and Ennio Morricone, and moments that seem to echo Eric Clapton and Michael Kamen's soundtrack work on the LETHAL WEAPON series.

Unsurprisingly, it's not altogether cohesive, but it has its moments, and the performance here is far better rehearsed than its original recorded incarnation. The rest of the album veers, generally attractively, between neo-Andrew Lloyd Webber balladry such as "Pictured Within" and "Wait a While," (the latter a tour-de-force by guest vocalist Sam Brown), and more traditional Purple fare. Guitarist Steve Morse is featured in impressive guitar workouts on both "Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming" and the much-recorded "Smoke on the Water."

Mojo (Publisher) (2/00, p.100) - "...suprisingly enjoyable....Highlights? Try Sam Brown's vocal on 'Wait A While', or Morse's instrumental 'Take It Off The Top'..."