Saturday 5 November 2016

Catherine of Aragon (Rick Wakeman, 1973)

This is the opening track of "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" and one of the musical pillars of Wakeman's solo career. The resolute intro, the elaborated scales and the surprising melodic parts are some of the highlights of this instrumental, and not the only ones. The artistic depiction of Catherine's joyous and also spiritual temper is perfect: a living portrait come out from each note and each tempo change.


Catherine of Aragon was Henry's firts wife.


The impressive amount of keyboards employed by Rick is never too pompous and the other instruments (guitar, drums and a beautiful choir) add a slight and welcome "band-like" flavour. Lively and everchanging, "Catherine of Aragon" is one of the most beautiful keyboard-driven tracks ever (IMHO, of course) and rightly appears on most of Wakeman's live tracklists. Luckily.

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