I’m sitting listening to Yoko Hirota playing Toronto composer Brian Current’s mesmerizing Sungods on a just-released album of Canadian music for solo piano. The piece will never make a Top 10 popularity list or something like the Toronto Symphony’s upcoming Audience Choice concerts.
Here’s what the TSO and conductor Shalom Bard will present on Saturday and Sunday:
•John Williams: Theme from Star Wars
•Beethoven: Second movement from Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92
•Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
•Dvořák: The fourth movement of Symphony No. 9
•Barber: Adagio for Strings
•Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture
•Plus a “wild card” piece from a list the audience will vote on at each concert.
According to a TSO spokesperson, 3,500 people cast ballots for this programme, so, from a statistical point of view, this is more than a representative sample of the symphony ticket-buying public. (You’ll find concert details here.)
For curiosity’s sake, I thought I’d compare this with other lists of top classical hits. I also wondered about the Star Wars score on the list and how much other non-art music finds its way onto classical hit lists.
I went to iTunes to see what their Top 10 classical sellers are and discovered that, in Canada, only one of the 10 pieces listed is art music: No. 4 — Yo Yo Ma’s interpretation of the Prelude from Bach Suite No. 1 for solo cello.
The rest of the music was all pop/popera stuff. There’s nothing wrong with it, or listening to it. But it is not something we would expect at a symphony concert, for example.
Last Sunday’s Classic FM Chart from England told a similar story, with André Rieu on top, followed by the soundrack to The Hobbit and an Andrea Bocelli album. Nicola Benedetti’s Silver Violin album was the top seller I would consider legit classical, at it stood in the No. 8 spot.
I checked in with Classic FM’s Hall of Fame, an annual Top 300, compiled from listener votes. The top 6 for 2012 were:
•Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2
•Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending
•Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
•Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4, the “Emperor”
•Paul Mealor: Wherever You Are (it’s from a British TV series)
•Mozart: Clarinet Concerto
I consulted the Naxos Music Library blog, which featued a “must own” classical list in 2009:
•Barber: Adagio for Strings
•Richard Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra
•Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker
•Bizet: Carmen
•Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
•Wagner: Ring Cycle
Since only Lorin Maazel is the only conductor I’ve witnessed with the ability to present Wagner’s Ring in concert (in abridged, symphonic form), I went looking for classical “singles,” first at Kickass Classical. The Top 6 there are (and we get a bonus “keyword” to describe each selection):
•Beethoven: First movement from Symphony No. 5 — “rousing”
•Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture — “powerful”
•Mozart: Allegro from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik — “formal”
•Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D minor — “scary”
•Rossini: William Tell Overture — “horses”
•Pachelbel: Canon in D — “wedding”
In a similar vein, from Top 100s Radio we get:
•Handel: Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah
•Richard Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra
•Johann Strauss Jr: The Blue Danube
•Brahms: Lullaby
•Wagner: Prelude/Overture to Lohengrin
•Chopin: Funeral March from the B minor Sonata
So the Toronto Symphony’s list is, in this context, not bad at all.
But I’m seriously concerned about the amount of non-classical music on classical sales charts. What would classical album sales look like if the pop stuff and movie soundtracks were moved to a different spot?
John Terauds