The Classic FM Concise Hall of Fame

Copyright

Introduction

We first launched the Classic FM Hall of Fame in 1996. We had no idea back then that we were giving birth to a phenomenon. It has become so much more than just an annual chart – spawning a daily radio programme and a whole series of bestselling CDs.

Since we started our quest to identify the United Kingdom’s favourite pieces of classical music, we have produced fifteen annual charts. Each one offers a snapshot of our listeners’ favourites at a given point in time. We are often asked how we go about compiling the chart. What happens is that at the beginning of each year, we ask our listeners to send us their top three all-time classical favourites. Every single one of those votes is registered on a computer, which creates a running tally of the relative positions of each of the pieces. The final chart is produced just before Easter. Classic FM’s team of music producers then sets about the unenviable task of fitting all 300 works into one 48-hour countdown, which is broadcast from dawn to dusk on Good Friday, Easter Saturday, Easter Sunday and Easter Monday.

The chart on which we have based this book is a distillation of all of those fifteen years of charts, which we broadcast in full at the beginning of 2011. How did we arrive at this ‘ultimate’ Classic FM Hall of Fame? Well, we took the annual Top 300 from 1996 to 2010 and created a new Top 300 based on each work’s relative position in the annual countdowns. That means that all the works that have seen their popularity ebb and flow over the decade and a half since the Classic FM Hall of Fame began receive a chart position based on aggregation of their achievements over the full period. New works entering the chart in more recent years (in many cases because they hadn’t actually been composed as far back as 1996) are more likely to appear further down our chart because they don’t benefit from listeners’ votes in the early years of the countdown.

During the first five years of the chart, one composer reigned supreme: Max Bruch. In 1996, he surprised all of us by beating the likes of Mozart and Beethoven to take the No. 1 spot with his Violin Concerto No. 1. At No. 300 the same year was another work by Bruch, Kol Nidrei. So a lesser-known composer, born in Cologne in 1838, not only topped but tailed our debut chart. That Bruch found himself at the top of the chart was all the more remarkable when you consider that, by the time he died in 1920, his music had drifted out of fashion to such an extent that his reputation had dwindled to almost nothing. It also proves that looks count for very little with Classic FM listeners – a German contemporary of Bruch once said of him, ‘In personal appearance, he is by no means as majestic as one would suppose from his works.’

Bruch maintained his place in pole position a further four times, confounding the pundits who claimed that his early success was merely a fluke. But, in 2001, Classic FM’s listeners voted Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 into the top spot. Forever linked to that classic romantic movie moment on a railway platform in the film Brief Encounter, the work also enjoyed five years at the peak of the chart through until 2005. Prior to the work’s spell at the top, Rachmaninov was a constant bridesmaid to Bruch’s bride, taking the No. 2 position each year.

Then in the year that we all celebrated his 250th birthday, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart knocked Rachmaninov from his perch with his Clarinet Concerto. But his stay at No. 1 was short-lived, with our first English work topping the poll in 2007, when Vaughan Williams climbed to the top spot with his beautifully wistful The Lark Ascending. At the time of writing, this work continues to fly high, having been ahead of the rest each year until 2010. It marks an enormous success for a piece of music that made its chart debut at No. 18 in 1996 – hence its relatively low position in the ‘chart of charts’, which follows over the next few pages.

In the aggregated chart, which we have used as the basis for this book, the four works that have held the No. 1 position in our fifteen annual charts take the top four positions in our ‘ultimate’ countdown. With Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending in fourth place, Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 2 comes in third, having seen its support wane since the early days of the Hall of Fame. Mozart might have taken the crown only once in our annual charts with his Clarinet Concerto, but the work is rewarded for its consistently high ranking by coming in at No. 2. That means that the overall winner in our search for the UK’s favourite classical work over the past fifteen years is Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2.

Cinema successes and failures always have a part to play in our annual charts, and in 1998 there was one movie that hit the headlines more than any other. There are very few superlatives that haven’t already been used to describe the film Titanic. Among the eleven Oscars it won was that for Best Dramatic Score. Classic FM listeners gave this award their seal of approval by voting James Horner’s majestic score into the No. 75 slot, the second highest new entry to the chart that year. No round-up of movie soundtracks that feature in our Top 300 would be complete without mention of John Williams, whose four entries in our aggregated chart, including Schindler’s List and Star Wars, put him well ahead of any other film composer. Another of Williams’s soundtrack successes, Harry Potter, together with Howard Shore’s music from The Lord of the Rings are relative newcomers to the Hall of Fame, both having been released since we began our series of charts fifteen years ago. The two films have since given birth to major franchises of their own.

In 1997, the highest new entry in the chart was Adiemus, which shot in at No. 134. The haunting voice of Miriam Stockley performing Karl Jenkins’s breakthrough work was one of the biggest-selling records of the 1990s. Jenkins has become the most popular living composer, with Adiemus eventually being eclipsed by his even more wildly successful The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace. Living composers continue to be well represented in the chart, with the likes of Patrick Hawes, Nigel Hess, Paul McCartney and Jon Lord all earning their places in the pages of this book.

Operatic works have performed strongly every year and Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers has consistently been the highest-placed representative of the genre. In terms of choral music, that hardy perennial of choirs across the land, Handel’s Messiah has regularly appeared ahead of the rest of a chasing pack, which includes masterful works from nearly all the other big-hitting composers.

Some pieces become popular with Classic FM listeners because of particular programmes on the station. Among these are the music of the eighteenth-century Italian Jesuit priest, Domenico Zipoli, and in particular his beautiful Elevazione; Arvo Pärt’s deeply minimalist music, such as Spiegel im Spiegel, has grown in popularity since the countdown first aired, while the Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi (Le Onde) and American Jay Ungar (The Ashokan Farewell) have enjoyed great success based on the airplay that they have received on Classic FM.

It’s always surprising how many ‘one-hit wonders’ appear in the chart each year – pieces from composers with one magnum opus that puts all their other work in the shade. It seems ironic that among them are some of the greatest pieces of classical music ever written: Pachelbel’s Canon in D, Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, Holst’s The Planets and Allegri’s Miserere. At the other end of the scale comes Mozart,  who has had more entries in the chart each year than any other composer, beating Beethoven into second place every time. Edward Elgar has been a consistent performer, flying the flag as our most prolific home-grown composer in terms of number of entries in the chart.

This book contains details of all 300 entries in our aggregated Hall of Fame, along with biographical information about the main composers whose music features in the chart. You will find a list of the complete Top 300 works in our all-time Classic FM Hall of Fame at the front of the book. This is followed by detailed entries for each of the works that feature in the chart arranged alphabetically by the composer’s surname. For composers who have more than one entry, these are ranked according to each piece of music’s relative position in the Top 300, with the most popular work coming first.

We’ve also made a recommendation for a recording of each of the works, which we believe shows off the music at its best. Of course, in many cases there are hundreds, if not thousands, of different recordings of each work from which we have had to choose. There will always be a good deal of subjectivity involved in narrowing our choice down to a single CD or download. In making our selection, we have relied on the database of thousands of recordings that we keep at Classic FM, so you will find that our choices tend to reflect what you hear on the radio.

The Classic FM Hall of Fame is very much a living, breathing entity, reflecting fashions and events in the world around us. For this reason there can never be a single definitive chart – only a series of snapshots of tastes at any given moment in time. Each year the chart changes, so who knows which composers will come to the fore, which film scores and operas will capture our collective imagination, or which long-forgotten pieces will be revitalised by a new recording. Whatever they may be, you can rest assured that we will be here at Classic FM to share your delight in discovering them.

Darren Henley

Sam Jackson

Tim Lihoreau

Classic FM, March 2011

Classic FM is the UK’s only 100 per cent classical music radio station. Since we began broadcasting in September 1992, the station has brought classical music to millions of people across the UK. If you’ve yet to discover for yourself the delights of being able to listen to classical music twenty-four hours a day, you can find Classic FM on 100–102 FM, on Digital Radio, online at www.classicfm.com, on Sky channel 0106, on Virgin Media channel 922 and on FreeSat channel 722.

Classic FM Magazine is published monthly, containing full details of the station’s programming, as well as the latest news and interviews from the world of classical music. A free CD accompanies each month’s magazine, which is available from most newsagents.

Among Classic FM’s many CD releases is a range exclusively available from HMV. The Classic FM Full Works series provides top-quality recordings of many of the most popular classical works, played in full by world-famous musicians. Priced at just £5.99, these CDs are perfect for both the dedicated collector and for those who are just discovering classical music. You can find out more at www.classicfm.com/fullworks.

Classic FM works particularly closely with six orchestras around the UK, with the aim of encouraging new listeners to enjoy the power and passion of hearing a live orchestra playing in the concert hall. Check the station’s website to find out if the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Northern Sinfonia, the Orchestra of Opera North, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra or the London Symphony Orchestra are performing near you.

Classic FM has a long history of working to develop the next generation of classical music lovers, supporting organisations such as Music for Youth, which runs the annual Schools Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts, which has worked with the Philharmonia Orchestra to deliver an annual orchestral music education project to thousands of children across the UK, thanks to funding from the radio station’s charity appeal. Currently, the Classic FM Foundation is raising money to enable the Nordoff Robbins music therapy charity to deliver thousands of extra therapy sessions to disabled and disadvantaged children and young people around the country.

The Top 300 Chart