Editor's Choice: The Truth About Crossovers!

Can you recognize the pop-standard melodies in this video? (Hint: one is by Rachmaninov, the other is by Tchaikovsky.)

PEOPLE IN THE CLASSICAL WORLD always talk about “crossover” hits—works from the standard repertory that somehow find a wider-than-usual audience: Stravinksy’s Rite of Spring, after its use in Disney’s Fantasia; the Andante from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C, K. 467, now popularly known as "Theme from Elvira Madigan," which appeared in the 1967 Swedish film by Bo Widerberg; the Flower Duet from Delibes’s Lakmé, which for years was heard in TV ads for British Airways.  

There are many types of crossover phenomena-- from Mozart’s variations on the French folk song "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman” to Liberace; from the specially created pop-classical hybrid work (Adiemus) to the artist whose charisma is as luminous as his or her talent (Pavarotti). And the crossover list is long.  Significantly, the range of crossover composers, artists, compositions, and types of music is huge—that is, it’s Gregorian chant that can cross over, and classical Indian ragas, and atonal Viennese abstractions, thank you very much, not just Mozart in a wistful mood.

Crossover popularity is often thought of as magical and rare, yet it’s not so magical after all.  Many of music’s most famous crossover successes—say, Ligeti’s Atmospheres, or Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, both from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey—result simply from the act of listening, a process that some people allow to take place at the movies, but never, if the music is unfamiliar, via the concert hall or a pair of headphones.

Listening is key. Listen to any music as openly as you’d watch a movie and you’ll easily get it: hip-hop, Balinese gamelan, Bulgarian choral, basement bhangra, Arabic street pop, Senegalese mbalax, etc.  And when you get it you have a portal into another world—a place now a bit more comprehensible and perhaps a bit more fascinating than before, a place about which may suddenly wonder why you weren’t more curious before.

Listen and you’ll see that almost any musical work or section thereof can cross over—even simply a melody!  The reason is that hardly any music is composed for as narrow an audience as possible.  Quite the opposite: composers have always been among the most generous artists, the biggest believers in the universality of art.  And of these, the Russians are perhaps the most generous—trusting most ardently in that common denominator of humanity, soul.

That’s why so many crossover hits are Russian!  And that’s why we wanted you to enjoy this video:  Vladislaw Tschernuschenko conducting the St Petersburg State Orchestra in a program including Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op.18; Chopin's Scherzo in B Minor; and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, Op.64, with pianist Arkadi Zenziper.  Two of the melodies you’ll hear are classic crossover success stories:

• "Full Moon and Empty Arms" is a 1945 popular song by Buddy Kaye and Ted Mossman, based on the third movement of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2.  (Mossman, by the way, made a habit of such musical treatments.  He did a version of the Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, called “Time Stands Still,” among others.)

• Part of the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony was given lyrics under the title “Moon Love”  (“Will you be gone when the dawn comes stealing through?”), and was recorded by Glenn Miller, among others.