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.
Bridgerton Season 3: Covers from the Series finally lets go of the No. 1 spot, to fall all the way to… No. 2 this week. They’ve bee replaced by Andris Nelsons & Vienna Philharmonic with their Summer Night Concert 2024, which makes the leap to the top spot all the way from No. 8 last week.
There are three newcomers to the Top Ten.
Bruce Liu takes a big step up from No. 16 on the Classical Chartz last week to land at No. 8 this week. The Montrealer continues in his seeming quest to conquer the entire classical music repertoire in his lifetime with his new release, Waves: Music by Satie. Let’s not forget that it was only 2021 when he made his splashy debut on the world stage with his win at the International Chopin Competition. Since then, he’s released recordings of Chopin, Bach, and an earlier Waves release featuring works by Rameau, Ravel and Allan, all on the Deutsche Grammophon label.
His latest release turns his attention towards Erik Satie and his Gnossiennes. The six short works for solo piano were written between 1890 and 1897. They were experimental works for the era, most of them composed in free time. Satie invented the use of the word specifically for this form of music.
Liu actually included a grand piano version of the Gnossiennes as bonus tracks in the vinyl limited edition of his official debut album, Waves (2023). The new version, released in digital form, come from new recordings on an upright piano.
Fellow Montrealer Yannick Nézet-Séguin makes his debut on the Classical Chartz this week at No. 9. He conducts the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in Johannes Brahms: The Symphonies, also on the DG label. The Chamber Orchestra of Europe (COE) has been Nézet-Séguin’s summer gig for more than a decade in Baden-Baden, Germany. In 2022, he was named as the artistic director of the Festspielhaus’s new La Capitale d’Été festival, the same year he led COE in a Beethoven symphony cycle that was released to good reviews. The four Brahms symphonies were recorded in 2022, and during COE’s residency at the festival in 2023.
Conductor Neeme Järvi is Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, and their release French Opera Overtures steps up from No. 11 to take the final spot on the Top Ten at No. 10 this week.
Järvi is the ENSO’s longest serving conductor. The maestro has enjoyed a storied career that has seen him lead 157 orchestras, including positions at the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the Scottish Royal National Opera (currently its honorary conductor), and as music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (currently music director emeritus), among others.
The album includes 20 tracks by lesser known French opera composers, including Daniel Auber’s (1782 – 1871) La Muette de Portici, S.16, and Les Diamanté’s de la couronne, S. 34, Jean Planquette’s (1848 – 1903) Les Cloche de Corneville, and several works from Alexandre Lecocq’s (1832 – 1918) Suite from Mam’zelle Angot.
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