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.
For yet another week, Hauser‘s Cinema reigns supreme on the Classical Chartz at No. 1, with Alain Lefevre‘s Consolation at No. 2, and John Lunn‘s soundtrack for Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale at the No. 3 spot.
Brand new on the Classical Chartz, and coming in at No. 4, is Lang Lang‘s Piano Book II. It’s the follow up to his hugely successful Piano Book (2019), his biggest album to date with more than 1 billion streams.
Lang Lang is dedicated to music education, and inspiring a love of piano playing in young musicians. It’s a collection of miniature piano pieces that range from classical music favourites to movie music and video game themes, including a piece by Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi, best know for his work with Ghibli Studio.
Lang Lang talks about the release in LV’s interview earlier this fall.
John Rutter‘s Reflections rises from No. 10 to No. 7 this week. Released in celebration of the British composer’s 80th birthday, it’s the first album of all orchestral works that the composer has released in a recording career that has spanned 58 years.
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Scottish pianist perform three works for orchestra by Rutter — Celebration Overture, Four Miniatures, and Cityscapes — along with the premiere recording of Reflections, his piano concerto in four movements, and Elegy, a work for piano and orchestra. In the title work, in effect, he reflects musically on the soundworlds and styles that have influenced him throughout his career, including Satie, Ibert, Ravel, and others.
Max Richter‘s Sleep Circle makes the leap from No. 9 to No. 5. The new album is his newly recorded and abridged version of Richter’s 2015 project Sleep. Richter has created a niche within the world of orchestral music by paying attention to what his audience wants: help falling asleep.
The original Sleep is one of the most streamed classical music albums in the world. Richter developed the music as an eight-hour cycle that is designed to take listeners into sleep, and he’s performed the entire work to audiences of people lying in beds, as well as an abridged 90 minute version in concert form.
Performing the music live after the initial Sleep was released has led to a deeper understanding of the process. “Some of these compositions, such as Dream 11, Moth-like Stars or Non-Eternal, are so rich in their poetic core that I wanted the music to be experienced in a more traditional way. I first wrote a structure for a concert performance. The new version we’ve recorded now is based on these performances, which also means that it has a slightly different architecture. It’s like Sleep distilled,” he says in the album notes.
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