“Popsongs”: Information in English
28.09.2009
Point given: Most of the time an alliance of Pop and classical music doesn’t work. But we think that Pop Songs suceeds in all areas!
The Fauré Quartett and album producer Sven Helbig, the intellectual mastermind behind Pop Songs, are well aware of the genuine differences between Pop and Classics. They accept and embrace them. Accordingly, Pop Songs is just what the title says: A collection of 15 popsongs – interpreted by a piano quartet. Call it an “instrumental song cycle”.
With their most recent CD project, the Fauré Quartett isn’t after new definitions of Pop or Classical. They simply are after good music. “We didn’t want to do crossover,” says Sven Helbig, “we wanted to engineer a real transformation.”
There are some very famous musicians among the originators of the music, artists like The Beach Boys, the Pet Shop Boys, Steely Dan or John Cale. But nevertheless, Helbig and his fellow arrangers Torsten Rasch and Peter Hinterthür have avoided the main street of Pop music. And they haven taken the idea of creating transcriptions musically fitting for a classical piano quartet very seriously – which results in the fact that you’ll have to be very well informed to even recognize the material upon listening to it. That’s where Pop Songs breaks any convention: By uncompromisingly placing popular music of today within the musical context of the past. This allows for the most interesting back-and-forth translations.
“Most classical works probably would have been called “Pop” in their own times, had music been reproduced and sold back then,” Sven Helbig points out. “After all, Pop simply means to achieve the maximum effect on the largest conceiveable audience. Classical and Pop music require different skills, but in the end, both do process the same basic emotions, human fears, human desires.”
The Fauré Quartett is one of the most sought-after piano quartets working today. With their repertoire ranigng from Fauré to Mozart, Brahms, Dvorák and Mendelssohn, the four young musicians – pianist Dirk Mommertz, violinist Erika Geldsetzer, Sascha Frömbling on viola and cello player Konstantin Heidrich – inhabit their own microcosm within classical music.
They have won numerous coveted music prizes, among them the ECHO Klassik and the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
The Fauré Quartett and album producer Sven Helbig, the intellectual mastermind behind Pop Songs, are well aware of the genuine differences between Pop and Classics. They accept and embrace them. Accordingly, Pop Songs is just what the title says: A collection of 15 popsongs – interpreted by a piano quartet. Call it an “instrumental song cycle”.
With their most recent CD project, the Fauré Quartett isn’t after new definitions of Pop or Classical. They simply are after good music. “We didn’t want to do crossover,” says Sven Helbig, “we wanted to engineer a real transformation.”
There are some very famous musicians among the originators of the music, artists like The Beach Boys, the Pet Shop Boys, Steely Dan or John Cale. But nevertheless, Helbig and his fellow arrangers Torsten Rasch and Peter Hinterthür have avoided the main street of Pop music. And they haven taken the idea of creating transcriptions musically fitting for a classical piano quartet very seriously – which results in the fact that you’ll have to be very well informed to even recognize the material upon listening to it. That’s where Pop Songs breaks any convention: By uncompromisingly placing popular music of today within the musical context of the past. This allows for the most interesting back-and-forth translations.
“Most classical works probably would have been called “Pop” in their own times, had music been reproduced and sold back then,” Sven Helbig points out. “After all, Pop simply means to achieve the maximum effect on the largest conceiveable audience. Classical and Pop music require different skills, but in the end, both do process the same basic emotions, human fears, human desires.”
The Fauré Quartett is one of the most sought-after piano quartets working today. With their repertoire ranigng from Fauré to Mozart, Brahms, Dvorák and Mendelssohn, the four young musicians – pianist Dirk Mommertz, violinist Erika Geldsetzer, Sascha Frömbling on viola and cello player Konstantin Heidrich – inhabit their own microcosm within classical music.
They have won numerous coveted music prizes, among them the ECHO Klassik and the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
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