Ransom Riggs
If Prokofiev wrote death metal
by Ransom Riggs - June 29, 2007 - 7:26 AM

There have been some great modern reinterpretations of classical music over the years — I’m sure David could chime in here with some pertinent examples, but Wendy Carlos’ Mooged-out versions of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach, famously featured in A Clockwork Orange come to mind — but until recently, none of them were performed by friends of mine. He goes by many aliases, but his fans call him Dr. Zoltan Obelisk, and his most recent musical offering is Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev’s “Sonata No. 8,” played in a hardcore/death metal style. I find this pretty hypnotizing, and all the more impressive when you compare it to someone actually playing a bit of the sonata (after the jump). (Try to ignore the odd message to the right of Prokofiev’s picture; it’s difficult to parse in a short space.) In any case — thoughts? Reactions? Rock ‘n’ roll?

And an excerpt from the original:

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Comments (5)

  1. pretty funny Randy! reminds me of that scene in Spinal Tap where the boys are playing “Heavy Duty”—when suddenly, in the middle of the song, they launch into Luigi Boccherini’s String Quintet in E major. I hope your friends aren’t upset by the comparison…

    One of my favorite reinterpretations is emerson, lake and palmer doing copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. D/L it if you’re not familiar. Pretty cool.

    posted by David on 6-29-2007 at 8:13 am

  2. You can’t forget Anthrax’s version of “Flight of The Bumblebee”!

    posted by Ian on 6-29-2007 at 11:33 am

  3. Interesting. Not bad. I still prefer the original.
    In the early ’90s I had a tape with an electronica version of Carmina Burana. The made it without permission and because the company I worked for owned the rights we had a bunch of these confiscated tapes. Again, I’ll take the orignal.
    BUT, the ELP stuff is exceptional! Don’t forget Pictures at an Exhibition.

    posted by Bassman on 6-29-2007 at 1:42 pm

  4. I would call this “progressive metal”, not “death metal”, for two reasons: 1. instrumentation (prog metal would use keyboards as in this recording; death metal would replace the keys with more guitars); and 2. death metal would not retain the harmonic complexity — death metal is almost exclusively modal (and usually uses more “evil” modes and scales like Locrian, various diminished scales, whole tone scale, and so on).

    Not to pick nits or anything — I like the performance a lot. :)

    posted by Chris on 6-29-2007 at 6:19 pm

  5. It’s funny, I keep waiting for Freddie Mercury to belt out something triumphantly with this one. I also have a friend whose favorite composer is Prokofiev, which is funny because this would probably torture his ears.

    posted by Brendan on 6-29-2007 at 6:32 pm

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