EVER MORE CRAZY MUSICAL LOOKALIKES

This is what happens when you go a few nights without attending a concert. You get bored and a little crazy, and then you start surfing the web for amusement, and you find some classical musicians who remind of someone else. So here goes for another whacky instalment of musical lookalikes...

Someone referred to Sir Georg Solti as the "screaming skull" when he rehearses orchestras, so that is quite appropriate that Captain America's nemesis The Red Skull takes his place alongside one of music's greats.

Classical music's first couple, Gramophone Award winning Sir Simon Rattle and his mate Magdelena Kozena, as played by The Duchess of Alba and Oscar winning Meryl Streep.

Conductor Helmuth Rilling and Formula One supremo
Bernie Ecclestone.

Founder of modern Vietnam Ho Chi Minh and founder conductor of the Bach Collegium Japan Masaaki Suzuki. The VC and the BC in perfect harmony.

Give or take 20 years, the British organist, music lecturer and Gramophone critic Marc Rochester (and my colleague with The Straits Times) bears a certain resemblance to the late great East German conductor Kurt Sanderling.

It is said that Romanians originally came from India, so it isn't too far fetched to suggest that conductors Sergiu Celibidache and Singapore's pioneering maestro Paul Abisheganaden are somehow related.

Pretty Women: Julia Roberts and Helene Grimaud. One loves Richard Gere and the other loves wolves.

A young Ronald Stevenson, great Scottish composer-pianist, looking like the great cartoon magician Mandrake.

I've always thought that George the loser from Seinfeld (played by Jason Alexander) was a splitting image of the love-forlorn composer of Lieder Franz Schubert. Both were particularly bad with women.

For those familiar with the Singapore and Taiwan musical scene, I thought that the teenage pianistic prodigy Tsai Min Hao could be the kid brother of the conductor Wang Ya-Hui.

YET MORE CRAZY MUSICAL LOOKALIKES

This is getting quite addictive, so I've come up with more crazy and totally ridiculous lookalikes of classical musicans who we love and adore...

Did anyone notice the similarity between Gustavo Dudamel, Musical Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Outliers and What the Dude Saw?

This after seeing James Bond's Casino Royale - Russian conductor-pianist Mikhail Pletnev bears a strange resemblance to Scandinavian actor Mads Mikkelsen who played Le Chiffre.

Women power from Southeast Asia: Filipino pianist Cecile Licad and beleaguered new Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

The bee-hive of Dame Fanny Waterman, founder and Director of the Leeds International Piano Competition, and a popular cartoon character from the comics of Malaysian cartoonist Lat.

Just do it! Nigerian-British pianist Glen Inanga is also an athelete, as is American basketball great Michael Jordan.

Also from Southest Asia, rising Singaporean conductor Adrian Tan and Thai artist-architect Chalermchai Kositpipat, creator of the surrealistic Wat Rong Khun (White Temple) of Chiang Rai.

Singaporean pianist Lim Yan looks like one of those young Shaolin Temple monks if he can be persuaded to don saffron robes.

This is a naughty one. Singaporean cellist Loke Hoe Kit shares a similar fashion sense with Sascha Baron Cohen's Brüno. (This is all the more curious as his teacher Nathaniel Rosen was a splitting image of Sascha Baron Cohen's Borat!)

MORE MUSICAL LOOKALIKES

To be honest, this post has less to do with the paucity of concerts in Singapore over the past few weeks (in previous years this period was occupied by the now dead in the water Singapore Sun Festival) but rather having watched the DVD of X-Men First Class. So here's to more goofy and hopefully hilarious musical lookalikes!

The first thing that struck me about Michael Fassbender's Magneto (aka Erik Lehnsherr) was that he looked like a younger version of the Hallé Orchestra's Sir Mark Elder. Here's what they look like in their X-Men outfits.

Still on X-Men or Star Trek: The Next Generation, Charles Xavier aka Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) could pass for the German conductor-pianist Christoph Eschenbach. Maybe they have the same hair-stylist.

Still on conductors, the Israeli maestro Eliahu Inbal, who conducts the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in Beijing next week in the Beijing Festival, does look a bit like the World Wrestling Entertainment's Hall of Famer Chief Jay Strongbow. Wonder how he executes the Tomahawk chop.

The actor George Burns (Nathan Birnbaum) and the composer Hans Gal. Enough said.

The recent Bhutan royal wedding, with King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and Queen Jetsun Pema, as played by Chinese composer Tan Dun and heroine Mulan. No guesses as to who will write the film music should it be made into a movie.

This is an obscure one, just for piano competition buffs. With a lot of imagination, Dr Gustav Alink 20 years years ago would have been a dead ringer for the actor Aaron Eckhart, who played the spin doctor Ned Naylor in the movie Thank You for Smoking.

Still on the subject of pianists, the hirsute Italian keyboard virtuosos Alessandro Deljavan and Davide Cabassi have a violent alter-ego in Popeye's rival for Olive Oyle's hand, the brutish Bluto.

Positively the last on pianists, Serbia's Ana Jovanovic and France's Helene Tysman can definitely play Chopin.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH? More Positively the Last Classical Musicians and their Lookalikes

Oops, I've done it again. Just could not help it, but here we go again...

Everybody loves the Mexican tenor Rolando Villazon, especially the Hindus as he has an Afro as luxuriant as Sai Baba.

Still on grandiloquent afros, Canadian soprano Measha Brueggergosman is more than a match for Sai Baba.

Hair is the subject of interest here, uniting Irish playwright and music critic George Bernard Shaw with Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism.

Now we know why the nickname for pianist-composer Leopold Godowsky was Buddha.

Cult figures who love the rasta hairdo: Composer Meredith Monk, reggae god Bob Marley and pianist Joanna MacGregor.

Doesn't pianist Kathryn Stott look like the Alien-stalking and gorilla-hugging Sigourney Weaver?

Speaking of Aliens, Predators and Pianists, Michigan piano pedagogue Logan Skelton (teacher of Lee Pei Ming and Azariah Tan) is a dead-ringer for the android Bishop played by Lance Henriksen.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH? Positively the Last Classical Musicians and their Lookalikes

Due to popular demand (mainly from myself), I'm back with positively the last group of lookalikes in the classical music world...

Rowan Villazon meets Rolando Atkinson, the perfect voice and face for opera buffo.

Thanks to Singaporean piano teacher Koh Jia Hwei (Mrs Lim Yan), we have the young Dmitri Shostakovich and the young Israeli pianist Shai Wosner vying for the next J.K.Rowling instalment, Harry Potter and the DSCH Star of David.

Conductors and politicians: British band maestro Timothy Reynish and the late British conductor Sir Edward Downes with Singaporean presidential candidate Tan Jee Say. Besides freeing $60 billion for the economy, could his next election platform be to legalise euthanasia?

The German conductor Volker Hartung, out-going conductor of the NAFA Orchestra, is a spitting image of Werner Klemperer, son of legendary conductor Otto, and better known as Kolonel Klink in Hogan's Heroes.

Rowlf, the piano-playing dog in The Muppet Show, was probably modelled after the great pianist Vladimir de Pachmann, who thought that milking cows helped piano technique.

Russian pianist Anatol Ugorsky can certainly play Messiaen, but could he run an office like Dilbert's pointy-head boss?

The man who brought the Force to Esplanade Theatres on the Bay and National Arts Council Benson Phua and probably his favourite Star Wars character, the wise sage Yoda.

Still on the movers and shakers of Singaporean classical music: Singapore National Youth Orchestra chairman Dr Kee Kirk Chin and Singapore Symphony Orchestra director Prof. Lim Seh Chun.

Blonde ambition: Ukraine's Valentina Lisitsa and Kseniia Vokhmianina can certainly bring on piano fireworks, but can Cameron Diaz tickle the ivories?

They could be sisters, Singapore's most talented young musicians: violinist Selina Tang and indie rockstar Inch Chua.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH? Yet More Classical Musicians and their Lookalikes

I think I'm on a roll, but here are positively the last of classical musicians and their lookalikes... until I think of some more. Many thanks to my friends for some helpful suggestions!

Sargent Bilko (Phil Silvers) has engineered a scam by masquerading as some Russian emigré cellist Mstislav Rostropovich to gain entry into the White House.

Still on cellists, and thanks to Loke Hoe Kit, his teacher American cellist Nathaniel Rosen has fans for the 'tached look in Freddy Mercury and Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen).

Gidon Kremer as Paganini. Top marks to his hair-stylist for making a balding man look positively hirsute.

When Van Cliburn retired from performing, he left Texas for Hawaii 5-0, changed his name to James McArthur, and became immortalised in Steve McGarrett's favourite catchprase "Book him, Vanno."

Should they ever make a movie on the Philadelphia Orchestra years of Wolfgang Sawallisch, they ought to get Jack Nicholson to play the lead.

The secret to leading orchestras, football teams and an entire nation is to develop a high forehead and a strong chin, as Valery Gergiev, Dr Mahathir Mohamed, Robert Casteels and Fabio Capello have demonstrated.

The next movie about Frédéric Chopin has to feature Tartarstani pianist Rem Urasin, himself a finalist in the Chopin International Piano Competition.

A pianist friend suggested that the respected Italian pianist Benedetto Lupo resembled Pee Wee Herman, but I thought he had the eyes of Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. It least they love pasta!

Manchester-born organist, pianist and conductor Wayne Marshall must be chuffed that English international Ashley Young just joined the Red Devils.

The difference between sacred and profane: Kam Ning vs Vanessa Mae, both fiddlers. Still wondering if she did the shoot topless...

The resemblance is scary: Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Director Bernard Lanskey and the friendly and cuddly Sully from Monsters Inc.

Since we're still on the subject of furry and cuddly, here's Chewbacca (Star Wars), Harry (Bigfoot and the Hendersons) and Hagrid (Harry Potter). Should they open the Hogwarts Faculty of Magic and Witchcraft on the Kent Ridge campus of NUS, you know who to call...

Maverick cellist and maverick pianist: Singapore's Leslie Tan (T'ang Quartet) and British pianist James Rhodes.

Part 3 of the Musical Hobbits: Conductor Joshua Kangming Tan, pianists James Rhodes and Sergio Tiempo, and cellist Leslie Tan.

Have I gone too far? Or do you want more? Let me know!