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 two spots on the Classical Chartz remain unchanged from last week, with Lang Lang’s Piano Book II at No. 1, and Hauser’s Cinema coming in at No. 2. At No. 3, Isabelle Faust makes the biggest leap of the week, rising from No. 7 last week with her release Telemann Violin Concertos.
There are two newcomers to the Classical Chartz Top Ten — Jonas Kaufmann’s Doppelgänger, and Alexandre Tharaud’s Pianosong.
German tenor Jonas Kaufmann’s Doppelgänger includes excerpts from Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Kerner-Lieder, and Schubert’s Doppelgänger. Doppelgänger means a double or alter ego, and both the music and the source recordings reflect themes of duality and identity.
The excerpts from Dichterliebe were recorded in 1994, Schumann’s Kerner-Lieder in 2020 during the COVID lockdowns, and Schubert’s titular Doppelgänger in 2023. In other words, the album offers a chance to hear Kaufmann at age 24, contrasted by much more recent work.
If you buy the physical rather than digital product, you’ll also get a DVD with a 2023 Dramatized Staging of Schuberts Schwanengesang, Park Avenue Armory New York, directed by Claus Guthand, with set design by Michael Levine.
The six excerpts from Dichterliebe (dubbed as bonus tracks) come from recordings made after a class with Helmut Deutsch (the Austrian pianist also plays on the 2020 recording) while Kaufmann was studying at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich. Jan Philip Schulze plays the piano.
Pianist Alexandre Tharaud pays tribute to the iconic French singers and songwriters of the 20th century, including Jacques Brel, Édith Piaf, Barbara, Serge Gainsbourg, Charles Trenet, Léo Ferré, Michel Berger and others on his latest album. He’s taken their work and transposed it into music for piano and orchestra.
Tharaud acts as pianist and narrator, with Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine and conductor Pierre Dumoussaud, and Thomas Dunford on theorbo on Laurent Boutonnat’s Ainsi soit je.
In combining popular song and classical technique and arrangements, Tharaud brings his early love of French song over the decades into his present day practice.
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