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.
Dutch violinist and conductor André Rieu made a splashy debut on the Classical Chartz just last week, landing at No. 9. This week, he continues his meteoric rise to take over the No. 1 spot. His latest No. 1 album, The Sound of Heaven, comes on the heels of last year’s Love Is All Around, which made the Classical Chartz 2024 Top 20.
Andrea Bocelli (Duets (30th Anniversary)), Jon Batiste (Beethoven Blues), and François Dompierre (Requiem) each drop a step to flesh out the top of the Classical Chartz at Nos. 2, 3 and 4 respectively.
Two newcomers make the climb into the Top Ten this week. The Vienna Philharmonic and Riccardo Muti’s New Year’s Concert 2025 lands at No. 7, up from 13 last week. The concert was performed and recorded on January 1, 2025 in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna, and the program is a Strauss (largely) extravaganza, including works by Josef, Johann, and Eduard. The outliers are Josef Hellmesberger’s Fidele Brüder. Marsch aus der Operette “Das Veilchenmädl”, and Constanze Geiger’s Ferdinandus-Walzer, op. 10. It’s a crowd pleasing selection of music for the home crowd from the home team, and Muti seems to have captured the spirit of the city, as intended.
Various artists contribute to Fragments II – Lili Boulanger, which makes the leap from No. 12 last week to No. 8 this week. The Fragments I album launched the annual initiative by Deutsche Grammophon last year. In it, 12 leading electronic artists are invited to respond to a specific composer. For Fragments I, it was Erik Satie.
Fragments II focuses on the work of Lili Boulanger. Lili Boulanger was a young woman living in a time of uncertainty and conflict. She grew up in Paris, and after early training on multiple instruments, decided to become a composer while she was still in her teens. She became the first woman composer to win the coveted Prix de Rome at the age of 24.
Sadly, that’s the same year that she died of tuberculosis, leaving about 50 pieces of music.
The idea for the DG project is to take her work and bring it into a contemporary focus. There are 14 tracks on Fragments II, featuring artists like Niklas Paschburg, Fejká, Rodriguez Jr., Joplyn, and Anja Schneider, who prove that her music still resonates today.
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