Am I missing the point (1)?
mainI just don’t get it when classical musicians sap the energy from great pop songs.
Do you?
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Almost down there with the 12 Cellos of the Berlin Philharmonic and Yellow Submarine
No, I don’t think you’re missing the point. Classical musicians doing pop is cringeworthy in the extreme.
I’ll stick to Nobuaki Fukukawa’s version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPOm26cVEQY
Depends on what you mean by “energy”. Is it really that precious?
In any case, nobody is obliged to listen.
Best cello-sextet-in-a-church version I’ve ever heard.
Amen
Maybe it does — of the two, I would certainly rather hear the original. But this piece is quite charming; it is also a tribute to the fact that the Queen composition is sufficiently “real” music to warrant interpretation by others, in their own style. This has for decades, if not longer, served as a tribute to the fact that there is not only one way of doing things, or merely a tribute in general to something great.
Exactly. Useless by any name. A squandering of talent, time and effort for attention.
I think it’s beautiful, and I personally think Freddie would think so too.
I also think that a majority of actual classical musicians young and old would find beauty and value in this. It only seems like cynical old musicologists and critics can find something negative in everything.
Absolutely not! It sounds dreadfully anaemic with none of the vitality and drama of the original.
Well, no one can compare with the original but these are conservatory students playing with their teacher and they’ve done a fine job. So maybe, whereas most people would just shrug their shoulders and move on, it’s a slow news day and this is what counts for contemporary arts criticism?
Lift/Elevator or Cheese counter music. Pointless.
It’s like “101 Strings… minus 95 strings”
These transcriptions of pop hits to classical instruments are primarily interesting to other players of those instruments so this will be probably be watched by cello students.
But “Bohemian Rhapsody” has got to be among the least useful pop pieces to strip out the vocals and reduce to an instrumental.
Hmmm…sort of like Chopin’s Variations on La Ci Darem La Mano?
I think it’s pretty…powerful, and the group is tight…I like it! It’s a great Queen song, and covers of iconic music can often reveal new beauty. This version really highlights the lovely lyrical tune and the rock part is fun. They do a really good job. It sounds absolutely beautiful and is a fun rendition with all of the cellos. They are very expressive musically. It’s touching and tender. To me, at least.
“I just don’t get it when classical musicians sap the energy from great pop songs.
Do you?”
No. But what’s the harm?
They are just having fun, don’t you think? Nothing more serious than Royal philharmonic doing their recordinds of this kind of crossover, including Queen.
Great works get interpreted in all sorts of ways. Some work better than others.
I don’t get it either. I was in a group that did arrangements of pop songs for school concerts (Lady Gaga was hot on the list) and I thought it sounded terrible, was demeaning to what we were trained to do and also demeaning to LG, who is actually a very talented musician. We’re in an era of trying to make classical music relevant to the people who are not going to listen to/support it anyway. (Unfortunately, and I apologize, I do not have an immediate solution.) The demand for people’s time, attention and disposable income has never been greater. but that is no reason to dumb-down and attempt to be hip with these squalid attempts at pop. My two cents.
No, I don’t think you’re missing anything, Norman.
Classical musicians playing great pop songs has the same result as pop musicians playing great classical music: the results are often amusing and sometimes even entertaining, but always the “copies” are inferior to the originals. Always.
I think that the performance is actually very good, but the arrangement takes too many of the dramatic high parts down into “convenient” cello range which makes them lose some of their impact. The cello has an incredible range and I would have liked it if they exploited that for the big guitar solo and the top B-flat on “for me”.
It is simply a question of taste – and this can appeal only to people who have only the most unsophisticated appreciation of music. Thanks to our glorious capitalist system, that is most probably the right market to teach students to go for rather than cultivating real ambition.
….well, mainly the “Cello Gang” misses the point by playing like they never have listened to the original….
I would say the arrangement and performance are somewhat lacking (to be kind) however, with a bit of tweaking and the use of electric cellos this could be a worthwhile endeavour. But Mercury and May are giants of their art and cannot be emulated.