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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.<\/p>\n
For the complete top 20, tune into Classical Chartz<\/a><\/strong> with the New Classical FM\u2019s Mark Wigmore every Saturday from 3-5 p.m. Check out the full Top 20 list here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n The next two steps in the Classical Chartz switch their spots from last week. Yunchan Lim<\/strong>\u2019s Bach Goldberg Variations<\/strong> ends up at No. 5, while French violinist Renaud Capu\u00e7on<\/strong> steps up to No. 4 with J.S. Bach: Sonatas and Partitas<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Newcomers take up three of the remaining positions in the Classical Chartz Top Ten.<\/p>\n Conductor John Wilson and Sinfonia of London<\/strong> and their album Puccini Orchestral Works<\/strong> rise from No. 14 last week to land at No. 6. The album includes the Italian composer\u2019s early orchestral works, before he rose to fame with Manon Lescaut, along with student compositions, and rarely heard excerpts from his early operas Le villi and Edgar.<\/p>\n It offers another side of Puccini, known today largely through his enormously popular later operas, and a glimpse at his development as a composer. Puccini studied with Amlicare Ponchielli at the Milan Conservatory between 1880 and 1883, and the album includes his student compositions Prelude sinfonico, influenced by Wagner\u2019s Prelude to Lohengrin, along with a Scherzo, Trio, Adagetto, and Capriccio sinfonico. The latter was the work he wrote for his graduation, and includes elements you\u2019ll hear in the opening of La boh\u00e8me, which he composed about a decade later.<\/p>\n Le villi is a one-act opera he composed for a competition. Puccini didn\u2019t win, but the publisher who ran the contest commissioned another opera, Edgar. While the music for Edgar is lovely, a silly plot which involves a man, Edgar, torn between his virtuous love for the pure Fidelia, and lust for the seductive Tigrana, scuttled its success. Excerpts from Manon Lescaut complete the track list.<\/p>\n Nemanja Radulovic<\/strong>\u2019s simply titled Prokofiev<\/strong> makes the leap from No. 12 to end up at No. 7. The Serbian-French violinist is joined by Philharmonia Orchestra, Johan Dalene, Laure Favre-Kahn, Les Trilles du Diable, and Santtu-Matias Rouvali on the album.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is something wondrous in the music of Sergei Prokofiev,\u201d says Nemanja Radulovi\u0107 in a statement, \u201cas if it constantly moves between light and shadow, searching for truth through contrast, sarcasm, magic, love, irony, and beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n The album includes a range of material, from the Violin Concerto No. 2 to the Sonata for Solo Violin, the Sonata for Two Violins, and the Five Melodies Op. 35bis, along with arrangements of excerpts from the ballets Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella, the opera The Love for Three Oranges, and the \u2018Classical\u2019 Symphony.<\/p>\n Of the Violin Concerto No. 2, he writes that it was composed, \u201cat a time of profound inner questioning, when Prokofiev stood between two realities \u2014 the Western world, where he had spent several years, and the Soviet Union, to which he was preparing to return.\u201d<\/p>\n Canadian pianist Janina Fialkowska<\/strong> and her latest release Invitation \u00e0 la valse<\/strong> steps up from No. 15 to round out the list at No. 10 this week. The Atma Classique release takes listeners on a journey through the history of the waltz as a musical form.<\/p>\n The waltz, of course, is characterized by its swirling rhythm, and is linked with romance. But, from Weber to Ravel, through Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Grieg, Sibelius, and Tchaikovsky, Fialkowska reveals the numerous variations on the theme. It can be youthful and optimistic in nature, lyrical in its beauty, virtuosic, infused with the Nordic spirit of Grieg and Sibelius, and more.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a fascinating smorgasbord of waltz, a genre that is too often narrowly associated with Viennese pomp and nothing more.<\/p>\n Are you looking to promote an event<\/u><\/span><\/a>? Have a\u00a0news tip<\/u><\/a>? Need to know the best\u00a0events<\/u><\/a>\u00a0happening this weekend? Send us a\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>note<\/u>.<\/em><\/strong>![\"Top](\"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/04\/CHARTZ-APR-20-2026.jpg\")
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