Some of my favorite covers are ones that change up the instrumentation. Â It’s much easier, I imagine, to do a straight-forward cover of a rock song with a rock band, but probably less easy to take a pop song and turn it into a rock cello duet. Â These guys did it, though, and it is awesome.
The bombast and narrative of the video is a little over the top — do we really need another video framed as fight over a woman? — but I will admit that it makes for an intense, compelling video, one far more interesting to watch than just two guys sitting in chairs, sedately playing.
Cellists Hauser and Sulic are both very accomplished young men — Hauser, according to his webpage, was one of the last students to study under Rostropovich — and are both young enough to make me feel like I’ve accomplished nothing. Good job.
Stejpan Hauser: Official Website | Youtube
Luka Sulic: Official Website | Youtube
Update, 6/14/11: I went back to this post to fix the Youtube link, which had broken over the past several months, and found out that these guys got huge! The video went viral, they appeared on the Ellen show, they’ve got an official band name (2Cellos) and an official website and an album coming out later this month. Rock on, internet.
[…] beginning of the year, I posted a video from two young Croatian cellists doing a very impressive cover of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal”. Well, the video went viral and these guys suddenly blew up. Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser are back […]