Classical covers of pop songs?

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I recently heard a really good classical cover of "Clocks" by Coldplay at a fashion show that pretty much blew the origanl outta the water. Anybody know who's responsible for this masterpiece and are there anymore classical covers of pop, past and present?

― kevin says relax (daddy warbuxx), Tuesday, 14 June 2005 21:12 (twenty years ago)

o there are plenty more

― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, 14 June 2005 21:15 (twenty years ago)

p2p networks seem to be chocablock with "A String Quartet Tribute to" amongst others Nirvana, Coldplay, and Radiohead. I don't know if these are all by the same artists or not. There was also Apocalyptica that specialise in Metallica covers in a classical style.

― Zong Meow Xee, Tuesday, 14 June 2005 22:14 (twenty years ago)

London Philharmonic Orchestra's "Classic Rock" series to thread!

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Tuesday, 14 June 2005 22:31 (twenty years ago)

The Balanescu Quartett covered several pieces by Kraftwerk(!).

― Leo77, Wednesday, 15 June 2005 11:51 (twenty years ago)

Posession is the name of the Balanescu Quartet album, with about 6 Kraftwerk songs.

I was on holiday last wee and I heard a solo piano rendition of Genesis' 'Firth of Fifth' in a restaurant, it sounded amazing.

― mzui (mzui), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 11:54 (twenty years ago)

Phillip Glass did symphonic versions of Bowie's Low and Heroes. (They're crap though.)

― Jonathan Z. (Joanthan Z.), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 12:00 (twenty years ago)

There's an absolutely gorgeous instrumental cover of Bjork's "Hyperballad" by Polish jazz trio Marcin Wasilewski, Slawomir Kurkiewicz, and Michal Miskiewicz (damn, that was hard to type). Not classical but definitely worth a listen.

― Roz (Roz), Thursday, 16 June 2005 05:16 (twenty years ago)

fifteen years pass...

Michael Nyman's first string quartet makes use of "Unchained Melody".

https://open.spotify.com/track/31QtP3En7dP18W7jE8ynlJ?si=a02fa5d626fa42b6

The String Quartet No. 1 (1985) was commissioned by the Arditti Quartet. Nyman had attended a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's Grosse Fuge by the group, and found it the most theatrical performance on a string quartet he had ever witnessed, performed as though Beethoven had been trying to break through the limitations of the string quartet to create an orchestral sound. The quartet was originally intended to be a "compendium" of string quartet literature, but he decided that two pieces from different eras were enough of a contrast. It is built out of three distinct and diverse pre-existing music sources: John Bull's Walsingham Variations, Arnold Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2, and Alex North's "Unchained Melody". The use of Bull is an homage to his professor, Thurston Dart, who presented Nyman with the Musica Britannica edition of Bull's keyboard works as a graduation gift. "Walsingham" was a popular song in Bull's time, and Nyman's use of "Unchained Melody" (originally written for a 1955 prison film titled Unchained and famously covered by The Righteous Brothers, and the favorite song of Nyman's wife, Aet) is a contemporary equivalent. As noted by Pwyll Ap Siôn,[3] "Unchained Melody" is musically related to "Walsingham", as its opening three-note pattern of C-D-E is a slight variation of the melody of "Walsingham". "Unchained Melody" enters in figure H (measure 274) over a bass line of variation 9 of "Walsingham" that previously appeared in figure E.

― Hans Holbein (Chinchilla Volapük), Thursday, 10 June 2021 06:30 (four years ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I13uVL681oo

― xzanfar, Thursday, 10 June 2021 14:47 (four years ago)

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