The record
At a glance
- Artist
- Focus
- Released
- May 1974
- Album
- Fourth studio album
- Original tracks
- Five
- New drummer
- Colin Allen
- Producer
- Mike Vernon
Why it matters
Focus makes its most integrated large-form studio statement
Hamburger Concerto matters because Focus's classical references, rock power and humour finally operate inside one album-wide balance. The opening Delitæ Musicæ adapts an early-music galliard at miniature scale. Harem Scarem and Birth put the quartet under electric pressure. The twenty-minute title work then uses six named movements to join composed recurrence, solo development and sonic theatre.
It is also the only full Focus studio album with drummer Colin Allen. Pierre van der Linden left after the 1973 touring period, and Allen arrived from work with Stone the Crows and John Mayall. His broader percussion palette changes the music without removing the precise transitions that Focus required.
The title suite does not merely repeat Eruption's idea of filling a vinyl side. Starter, Rare, Medium I, Medium II, Well Done and One for the Road form a culinary joke, but the music develops recognisable themes through contrasting instrumental environments. Comic naming prevents the form from becoming self-important.
The album therefore represents culmination and instability at once. Van Leer and Akkerman remain the principal composers and front-line voices, yet the group would move toward shorter, funk-oriented studio pieces on Mother Focus. Hamburger Concerto is the last studio record of the 1970s built this completely around the band's established progressive language.
1973–74
An abandoned 1973 album, a departing drummer and a return to Olympic
Focus followed Focus 3 with intensive touring and the live At the Rainbow. In May 1973 the quartet attempted another studio album at Chipping Norton, but those sessions were abandoned. Several recordings later appeared on Ship of Memories, while an early idea connected with the eventual title work survived into the next completed studio project.
Pierre van der Linden departed late in 1973. Colin Allen joined shortly before further touring, giving Focus a British drummer whose playing could cover direct rock, hand percussion and the colouristic demands of the new arrangements.
From January through March 1974, the quartet worked at Olympic Sound Studios in Barnes with Mike Vernon producing. The project also used the organ at St Mary the Virgin in Barnes, extending van Leer's keyboard range beyond Hammond, piano, harpsichord, Mellotron, accordion and synthesizers.
Polydor released Hamburger Concerto in Europe in May, with Atco handling North America. The original LP contains four pieces on side one and the six-movement title composition across side two.
The Colin Allen quartet
Four multi-purpose players and an unusually broad instrument list
Allen's arrival is immediately audible as a change in weight and colour. He can drive Harem Scarem with a firm rock pulse, then use hand percussion and tuned accents to help the title suite distinguish one movement from another.
Van Leer's instrument list functions like an internal orchestra. Pipe organ supplies ceremonial scale; Hammond gives the quartet its familiar core; harpsichord and recorder sharpen older musical references; ARP and Moog bring a modern, sometimes abrasive lead voice.
Akkerman moves from lute and classical guitar to compressed electric riffs, sustained melody and long solo development. The contrast between Delitæ Musicæ and Rare is not a guest-versus-band division: it is one player changing historical and physical scale.
Ruiter is the stabilising line. His bass gives the suite continuity while bells, autoharp and small percussion widen passages without creating a separate orchestral layer.
Sound and construction
Renaissance scale, jazz-rock force and symphonic recurrence
Side one works as preparation through contrast. Delitæ Musicæ establishes plucked intimacy; Harem Scarem introduces dense electric motion; La Cathédrale de Strasbourg opens architectural space; Birth develops an Akkerman theme over almost eight minutes.
The title suite begins ceremonially, then repeatedly changes its relation between theme and texture. Pipe organ can frame the music at public scale, guitar can pull it back into quartet attack, and van Leer's voice can become an instrumental colour rather than a narrative lead.
Classical borrowing is material, not decoration. Older themes and chorale-like passages are revoiced through bass, drums, electric guitar and synthesizer. The point is transformation across timbres, not faithful orchestral imitation.
Vernon's production keeps the unusually broad palette legible. Pipe organ retains air, Allen's percussion stays physical, and synthesizer leads cut through without flattening acoustic guitar, lute or recorder.
Humour regulates grandeur. The cooking-degree movement names and fast-food title allow a twenty-minute concerto to be ambitious without presenting itself as sacred monument.
The rhythmic design is equally important. Ruiter and Allen rarely remain a neutral accompaniment while the front line changes instrument. Bass anticipates thematic turns, cymbals announce expansions, and hand percussion can lighten a passage without requiring a new tempo. Their flexibility lets guitar and keyboards exchange the apparent lead while the underlying form continues.
Silence and reduced texture provide proportion. Delitæ Musicæ is surrounded by acoustic space, La Cathédrale delays its full rhythmic arrival, and the concerto repeatedly withdraws from peak density. These contractions prevent the album's many keyboards and percussion colours from becoming an uninterrupted wall.
Track guide
Four first-side pieces and a six-movement concerto
Delitæ Musicæ
Akkerman adapts a galliard associated with Dutch composer and lutenist Joachim van den Hove. Plucked strings and flute create an early-music chamber before the electric quartet appears.
At little more than a minute, the piece is not an overture in scale but in vocabulary. Historical form enters the album without amplification or parody.
Its restraint makes the cut into Harem Scarem more dramatic. Focus defines range by placing two complete sound worlds back to back.
Harem Scarem
Van Leer's composition launches the new drummer through a hard, agile rhythm. Organ and guitar exchange compact lines while Ruiter's bass pushes beneath them.
Whistling and vocal effects recall Focus's comic use of the body, but the track does not rebuild Hocus Pocus. Its sections flow more continuously and Allen's percussion gives the momentum a different shape.
The piece is the album's direct electric statement: concise enough for a single edit, complex enough to introduce the quartet's revised mechanics.
La Cathédrale de Strasbourg
A long introduction creates height and distance before the rhythm section enters. Keyboard colour suggests an architectural interior without turning the music into literal programme.
The central movement becomes lighter and more mobile, with van Leer's whistle adding a human, almost casual voice inside the formal title. Its passage from reverence to swing anticipates the title suite's ability to move between ceremonial and playful registers.
Birth
Akkerman supplies a broad melodic framework that flute, guitar, harpsichord and organ successively illuminate. The theme grows by recurrence rather than constant replacement.
Allen's drumming gives each return a changed physical profile. Ruiter holds the lower line while the front instruments alternate between lyrical statement and sharper development.
As side-one finale, Birth gathers the album's miniature, rock and architectural modes into one medium-length form. The later bonus Early Birth reveals another stage of the material.
Hamburger Concerto
Starter opens the second side with ceremonial keyboard scale and states material that will support the entire construction. The sound of pipe organ places a comic title inside an unexpectedly public acoustic.
Rare shifts toward Akkerman's heavier guitar language. Riff, bass and drums pull the concerto from ceremony into muscular quartet exchange.
Medium I returns compositional control toward van Leer and uses his wordless voice as another lead timbre. Recurring ideas are recognised through changed instrumentation rather than exact repetition.
Medium II gives Akkerman a contrasting development area. Guitar phrases stretch across an active foundation while Allen and Ruiter prevent the solo space from separating from the suite.
Well Done broadens the harmonic frame and incorporates a Dutch Christmas-carol melody. Familiar ceremonial memory becomes part of the album's mixture of old material and modern instrumentation.
One for the Road completes the culinary sequence with synthesizer, guitar and ensemble returns moving toward resolution. A Westminster-style chime figure closes the work with one last public signal.
Across twenty minutes, the six headings are both jokes and landmarks. The suite succeeds because each change alters weight, colour or agency while shared material continues to bind the side.
Not one plot
Birth, ritual, architecture and comic appetite
Hamburger Concerto is not a continuous narrative. Delitæ Musicæ, Harem Scarem, La Cathédrale and Birth remain independent pieces; only the title track has a named internal sequence.
Ceremony recurs. Galliard, cathedral, birth, pipe organ, chorale and chime all invoke public or ritual forms. Focus repeatedly brings those associations into contact with electric quartet performance.
The title suite's food vocabulary cuts that ceremony down to human size. Starter, Rare, Medium and Well Done make formal development sound like an order in a restaurant.
Birth and transformation provide the deeper musical link. Early forms become rock arrangements, a theme changes instrumentation, and a new drummer enters an established ensemble without being asked to disappear.
Stone and neon
Marble classicism meets glowing restaurant signage
The gatefold sleeve uses a marble-patterned surface, formal serif lettering for Focus and a glowing, blurred treatment of the album title. Classical stone and restaurant-like neon visualise the title's central collision.
Inside, Graham Hughes's photography presents the musicians and working environment rather than extending a literal hamburger joke. The package balances monument and human workshop.
On the original LP, the four first-side titles face the six cooking-themed movements printed across side two. The typography makes the suite's internal construction visible before playback.
Later editions often index the whole concerto as one track. The sleeve remains useful because it preserves the six-part map.
May 1974
A final British chart chapter for the classic era
Hamburger Concerto appeared in May 1974 as Focus's fourth studio album. It reached number 20 in Britain and remained on the albums chart for five weeks.
Harem Scarem was selected for single release in several territories, but the album's identity remained tied to the side-long title work rather than a crossover event comparable to Sylvia. The band toured the material with Allen, and televised performances helped show that Birth and the concerto could function beyond studio assembly.
Its chart result was smaller than Moving Waves or Focus 3 but still placed a demanding, largely instrumental record in the British top twenty. It became the band's last 1970s studio album to chart there.
A catalogue summit
The culmination before Mother Focus changes direction
The album is widely treated as the culmination of Focus's early progressive period because it integrates rather than merely juxtaposes classical language and rock ensemble power. Its contrasts become one shared vocabulary.
The title composition joined Eruption and Anonymus II as a major long-form statement, yet its six-part recurrence is more tightly composed than the latter's open solo architecture.
Colin Allen's contribution gives the record a unique rhythmic identity. He remained for only a small part of the next project, making this the complete document of his Focus lineup.
Mother Focus would favour shorter jazz-funk pieces and reduced Akkerman involvement. Heard before that shift, Hamburger Concerto sounds less like a permanent formula than a final, exceptionally concentrated summit.
The record also completes a sequence of different solutions to the album-side form. Eruption builds mythic recurrence, Anonymus II opens into extended individual improvisation, and Hamburger Concerto uses six co-written movements with more explicit thematic control. Taken together, they show Focus revising the long form rather than repeating one successful template. The suite's later concert life confirms that its studio detail could still support a direct quartet performance.
Which edition?
Five original bands, one archival coda
Hear the original five tracks first. Early Birth is valuable session material, but it changes the designed ending if allowed to follow the chime of One for the Road without context.
Use the printed six movement names while listening to the title track. They identify compositional changes that a single twenty-minute digital index conceals.
The 2001 and 2020 Red Bullet masters keep the core programme easy to identify. The anthology is preferable only when alternate mixes and the single edit are part of the listening goal.
Keep Ship of Memories nearby as a separate archive. Its 1973 Chipping Norton material documents the abandoned path between Focus 3 and this finished album.
A listening path
Hear how side one teaches the language of side two
- First pass: Hear the original LP without Early Birth and preserve the turn before the concerto.
- Follow Colin Allen: Notice how drum kit, congas, timpani and small percussion articulate different scales.
- Map the suite: Use the six cooking headings as landmarks for changes in composer, texture and lead voice.
- Return to Birth: Compare its finished recurrence with Early Birth only after the album ends.
- Continue: Move to Ship of Memories for the abandoned 1973 route, then Mother Focus for the stylistic pivot.
Research trail
Sources and further reading
- Official Focus history — Focus
- Hamburger Concerto album record — MusicBrainz
- 50 Years track and credit archive — MusicBrainz
- Hamburger Concerto credits and LP record — Strawberry Bricks
- Hamburger Concerto digital catalogue — Red Bullet via Apple Music
- Focus chart history — Official Charts
- Hamburger Concerto original LP sequence — Vinyl Exchange