Enjoy new music with our classical music chart for this week. Our weekly selections are based on sales numbers and simply what albums we love and think you NEED to hear.
For the complete top 20, tune into Classical Chartz with the New Classical FM’s Mark Wigmore every Saturday from 3-5 p.m.
There are three new releases in the Top Ten this week. Lang Lang’s newest, simply titled Saint-Saëns, includes two CDs worth of music, and lands on the chart at the No. 5 position. It includes a wealth of music from the French composer, from his perennially popular Carnival of the Animals, to works for solo and four hands, performed by Lang Lang with wife, pianist Gina Alice. The second disc incorporates work from a range of French composers often overlooked by today’s concert programmers, including Ravel, Debussy, Delibes, Fauré, and five women composers of the early 20th century — Louise Farrenc, Lili Boulanger, Charlotte Sohy, Mélanie Bonis alias Mel Bonis, and Germaine Tailleferre.
The National Arts Centre Orchestra and Truth In Our Time climbs from last week’s No. 11 position up to 6. You can check out our interview with conductor Alexander Shelley here, where he talks about the contemporary relevance of the album’s theme, as well as it musical selections. That includes Philip Glass’ Symphony No. 13, dedicated to late journalist Peter Jennings, and Canadian violin virtuoso James Ehnes as the soloist for Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D major.
Renaud Capuçon’s Les Chose de la Vie — Cinema II is a follow up to his uber-popular Cinema album, released in 2018. In 2024, the French violinist takes another dive into the vast repertoire of film music. The selections on the new release are eclectic in terms of source material, and range from Michel Legrand’s The Windmills of Your Mind to Georges Delerue’s Concerto de l’adieu from the war film Diên Biên Phu. He’s joined by French orchestra Les Siècles and their conductor Duncan Ward as the album makes the climb from No. 13 to No. 4.
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