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.
The top of the Classical Chartz remains unchanged from last week, with Dutch violinist and conductor André Léon Marie Nicolas Rieu at the top. His The Sound of Heaven reigns at No. 1 for a third week. Likewise, Jon Batiste holds fast at No. 4 with Beethoven Blues after many weeks on the Classical Chartz.
In between, François Dompierre’s Requiem climbs from No. 6 back up to No. 3, and Andrew Bocelli, whose spent the better part of both 2024 and 2025 so far on the Classical Chartz, steps from No. 3 back up to No. 2 with Duets, 30th Anniversary.
What’s new this week? Bandoneon virtuoso Denis Plante and cello prodigy Stéphane Tétreault step up from No. 11 last week to land in the Top Ten at No. 10 with their release Stradivatango.
The two Canadian musicians explore the world of tango with a virtuosic flair, including classic Argentine tango by composers Ángel Villoldo (1861-1919), Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992), Carlos Gardel (1890-1935), and Osvaldo Pugliese (1905-1995), and new compositions written for the duo by Denis Plante. Plante’s Stradivatango, the title track, is a longer work in eight movements that combines baroque and tango influences. It’s a unique take on both genres that offers more than the sum of its parts.
Ludovico Einaudi’s The Summer Portraits makes its debut on the Classical Chartz at No. 7. The album was inspired by Einaudi’s sojourn at a rented house on the Island of Elba, in Italy, last summer. He discovered a series of oil paintings painted on the wood inside the house, and learned that they’d been created by a women who’d spent her summers there during the 1950s.
He takes the shared experience of magical summer memories and turns it into music.
“I’m very satisfied, now, with all the colours that I could blend in the album,” he says in a social media post. “There’s quite a rich palette of colours that I saw in the house.”
Those warm memories are what we need to take us through the rest of the winter season.
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