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 Vienna Philharmonic’s Summer Night Concert 2025 holds on to the top spot on the Classical Chartz for a second week. Next up, the video game soundtrack Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 by Lorien Testard lands at No. 2, up from No. 5 last week.
There are two newcomers to the Classical Chartz Top Ten: Twenty by VOCES8, and Satie: Discoveries by Alexandre Tharaud.
VOCES8 is celebrating their 20th anniversary with this two-CD set, which made the jump from No. 12 last week to land at No. 8, appropriately enough. The GRAMMY-nominated vocal ensemble wanted to capture their evolution over the last decade in particular, reflecting all of the voices who’ve been part of VOCES8 since 2016. The selections are diverse, and include a range of favourites from Danny Boy to Ave Maria to A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.
The British a cappella octet has previously recorded and performed live in a range of genres including jazz, pop, classical music, Early Music, and their own arrangements. The VOCES8 Foundation focuses on education.
The anniversary was also commemorated with a concert on June 8.
Satie: Discoveries by Alexandre Tharaud makes a bigger leap, up from No. 17 last week to end up at No. 9. The title of the album is no hyperbole — these are real discoveries.
Alexandre Tharaud was born in Paris. His mother was a dance teacher, and his father directed and sang in amateur productions of operettas. Alexandre would appear in his own share of theatrical productions in northern France as a child. He went on to study piano at the Conservatoire de Paris, and won his first competition prize at the age of 17, launching a prolific professional performing and recording career.
Tharaud has recorded a wide variety of classical music over his career, often focusing on 20th century French composers. In this remarkable new recording, he reveals works by Erik Satie rediscovered by researchers Japanese composer Sato Matsui and British musicologist and composer James Nye.
Working independently, Matsui and Nye tracked down manuscripts and sketches of Satie’s that were gathering dust. Often these consisted of short ideas that had come to the composer while walking in Paris, and which he’d sketched out in notebooks.
The two researchers took those fragments and reconstructed the works into scores that are now being published for the first time.
The album marks the 100th anniversary of Satie’s death.
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