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.
Lang Lang’s Piano Book II takes over the No. 1 spot on the Classical Chartz this week, up from No. 4. Hauser’s Cinema drops one spot to the No. 2 position, followed by Alain Lefevre’s Consolation at No. 3, and Max Richter’s Sleep Circle, which steps up from No. 5 to land at No. 4.
There are two newcomers to the Classical Chartz Top Ten — Isabelle Faust’s Telemann Violin Concertos, and Daniil Trifonov’s Tchaikovsky.
German violinist Isabelle Faust launched her career with wins at the Leopold Mozart competition as a teenager, and the Paganini competition in her early 20s. She’d begun learning the violin at the age of five, along with her father, a school teacher who decided to take up a bow himself at the age of 31. She quickly became the family’s star pupil.
She has gone on to fashion a stellar career as a soloist and recitalist, performing with major orchestras all over the world. Faust is also professor of violin at the Berlin University of the Arts. Isabelle has created an impressive catalogue as a recording artist, including the current release.
On Georg Philipp Telemann, Concertos pour violon. Ouvertures, suites, fantaisie…on the Harmonia Mundi label, she’s accompanied by the Akademie für Alte Musik, Berlin with Ute Hartwich, trumpet, and concertmaster Bernhard Forck. Telemann was a pioneer of the concerto form, leaving more than 125 in his name, and was fond of exploring the violin’s virtuosity.
The recording includes a wealth of Telemann gems, including his Ouverture-Suite for violin, strings and continuo TWV 55:h4 B minor; Sonata for trumpet, strings and continuo TWV 44:1 major; Concerto ‘The Frogs’ for violin, strings and continuo TWV 51:A4 A major; Suite for 2 violins ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ TWV 40:108 D major / ré majeur; Fantasia no. 3 TWV 40:4. I, (an extract from the seminal 12 Fantasias for Flute without Bass, TWV40:2-13); Circle Canon (‛Canone infinito’) for 2 violins; Concerto for violin, strings and continuo TWV 51:a1 A minor; and Concerto for violin, trumpet, cello, strings and basso continuo TWV 53:D5 D major.
The music of Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is riding a wave of interest this year, largely due to the interest of multiple pianists. The Classical Chartz have seen multiple albums of the composer’s music this past year, and the latest comes from another Russian — Daniil Trifonov.
On the album, he’s focusing on some of the composer’s most intimate works for solo piano. That includes the Concert Suite created by a young Mikhail Pletnev from Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty ballet, Op. 66a; Six Morceaux, (Thème original et variations in F major) Op. 19 No. 6; the Children’s Album, Op. 39; and the rarely performed early Piano Sonata in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 80. The works share themes of childhood and youth mother and family.
“We think of him as an archetypical Romantic,” comments Trifonov in the liner notes. “But particularly in his younger years, Tchaikovsky found joy in his close relationships and emotional comfort in his family.”
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