“Mother Russia” by Renaissance

"Mother Russia" closes Turn of the Cards, Renaissance's 1974 album, and it's prog rock with a conscience. Poet Betty Thatcher, the band's lyricist as ever, wrote it for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, driven out of the Soviet Union earlier that year, and drew on his novel of Soviet repression, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Fans weren't used to Renaissance going topical, and Annie Haslam has had to keep reminding interviewers who the song is really about.

Strings and the odd piano surge carry a sparse opening for a couple of minutes before Haslam arrives, and later the full band churns through a long instrumental stretch under her wordless voice. Co-producer Dick Plant heard the real drive in John Tout's piano. Michael Dunford holds the music credit, though bassist Jon Camp claims that instrumental break as his own.

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