Although not a particular favorite, I am working my way through Philip Glass' "Heroes" Symphony. This is his fourth symphony and is based on the David Bowie album of the same name.
The first movement "Heroes" is benign compared to the Bowie/Eno original (or the Wallflowers' cover). The second movement is Abdulmajid, a song I don't remember from the original. Wikipedia reports it was released as a bonus track fourteen years after the original and is named (at the time of issue) after Bowie's Somalian wife.
Overall, the symphony is undramatic versus the original. And this despite Philip Glass generally being a dramatic composer. David Bowie would disagree:
It was though Philip had fed into my voice...but somehow had arrived, I feel, a lot nearer to the gut feeling of what I was trying to do.
I will say the treatment works better than Christopher O'Riley's piano transcriptions of Radiohead (I haven't heard his Elliott Smith recording). And although this symphony is pleasant, Bowie's Low album may have been the one to enthrall me at the time as a fruitful intersection of avant-garde and rock, similar to early Roxy Music.
wikipedia: "heroes" symphony "heroes" album spencer haywood (basketball player and iman's first husband)
napster: original "heroes" true love waits home to oblivion: an elliott smith tribute
