Click on Classical: Pops with chops, most popular composers

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Every Monday morning at about 9:15, I join John Birge on Classical MPR to discuss some of the stories we're featuring on our site. This week we featured two groups with the kind of skills you find in top choirs and orchestras, but who perform pop-friendly repertoire — and have the screaming fans that go with it.

Our choral stream producer Tesfa Wondemagegnehu talked with Brian Newhouse about the vocal group Pentatonix, a five-person a capella group whose fans go wild for their sweet harmonies and energetic covers of songs by the likes of Pharrell, Lorde, and Christina Aguilera. Read the conversation between Tesfa and Brian to learn why choral music geeks are starting to take this fun group very seriously. Also, be sure to visit ClassicalMPR.org tonight — Monday, April 14 — at 7:00 p.m. to follow a live chat between Tesfa and Conspirare co-founder Craig Hella Johnson.

Meanwhile, Sheila Regan profiles Well-Strung, a string quartet that also sings — and dances. They can toss off chamber-music masterpieces, but they typically don't get very far into the likes of Eine klein Nachtmusik ​before breaking into a pop hit like Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone." Click here to see them do their thing — and to learn the eyebrow-raising name of the very forthright musical group that some of the group members were performing in when they met.

Can you guess who the most frequently performed composers are? Since 2000, the League of American Orchestras have been keeping tabs on all performances by their member orchestras. Eleanor Peterson lists the top ten composers and​ the top ten most frequently performed works; click here to see what they are. See if you can guess which composer, regarded by many music critics as the greatest musical mind of all time, doesn't even make the top ten.​