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. Check out the full Top 20 here.
The Bridgerton Season 4 Soundtrack, featuring various artists (including Toronto-based Strings From Paris), holds on to the No. 1 spot on the Classical Chartz for another week. Jamie Duffy makes the climb from No. 5 to land at the No. 2 spot with his eponymous release, and Mikhail Pletnev’s Chopin & Scriabin Preludes steps down one position to end up at No. 3.
At No. 4, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and their new recording of The Miraculous Mandarin makes its debut into the Top Ten — and the biggest leap of the week — rising up from No. 12 last week. The album marks the orchestra’s third release on the Harmonia Mundi label.
The Miraculous Mandarin was recorded at Roy Thomson Hall between November 21 and 23, 2024, and showcases the TSO’s facility with 20th century music. As Music Director Gustavo Gimeno commented in a statement, Bartók is a natural addition after the first two Harmonia Mundi albums, which included the music of Messiaen and Stravinsky.
Bartók composed the work in 1918 and 1919, and it scandalized audiences with its story, which revolves around three tramps and their efforts to lure passersby into an apartment using an attractive young woman, hoping to rob them. It’s typically performed as an orchestral suite rather than a full “pantomime grotesque”, as Jewish Hungarian writer Melchior Lengyel had dubbed his own story.
The TSO recording presents the full score, along with Bartók’s 1943 Concerto for Orchestra, and Emilie Lebel’s 2021 work the sediments.
Hauser is the other newcomer to the Classical Chartz Top Ten this week. His EP The Swan, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, vaults from No. 14 last week to land at No. 7. The album takes its title from the Camille Saint-Saëns piece, an excerpt from The Carnival of the Animals. The Croatian musician has said that The Swan is the piece that first made him fall in love with the cello.
On the Sony Classical release, Hauser performs a range of works that emphasize romance, including an interpretation of the song “You Raise Me Up”, first popularized by Josh Groban, along with Gabriel Fauré’s “Après un rêve” and “Pavane”, Puccini’s aria “O mio babbino caro” from Gianni Schicchi, Sir Edward Elgar’s “Salut d’amour”, and Johannes Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5.
The video promoting The Swan also features the talents of Italian prima ballerina Angelica Gismondo.
It’s clear the classical crossover artist has yet another hit on his hands in arrangements (other than the title track) of orchestral and vocal works for solo cello.
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