This Week in Classical Music-Jan. 3, 2010

by: Jane Hilton

January 03, 2010

Carl Orff's Carmina Burana Still Topping the Charts

This Week in Classical Music-Jan. 3, 2010

( Phoenix, AZ )
•BBC Top Classical Picks
•Classical Music Downloads

This week in Classical Music 1/03/10

It’s “This Week in Classical Music”, an update on what’s happening in the classical music world; I’m Randy Kinkel.

The BBC’s Radio 2 Program, “The People’s Classical Chart” revealed its list of the top 30 most played classical music recordings in the UK in the past 75 years. The winner was Carl Orff’s “O Fortuna” the opening to his 1937 oratorio “Carmina Burana”. Classical music buff Stephen Fry, one of the show's contributors, added: "For some reason, it almost sounds satanic, although it's actually a religious piece." Second Place went to Ralph Vaughn Williams’ “Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis”. Third place went to a 1990 recording of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade by the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sir Charles Mackerras, who reportedly said he was “Delighted” the work had received so much play.

Lots of people are compiling lists and ruminations about the first decade of the 21st century; Anne Midgett of the Washington Post has her own thoughts about what the last ten years have meant for Classical Music:

Downloads brought the classical recording industry to its knees and rendered the standard format of the $25 CD an endangered species by decade's end. But downloads also led to a wider consumption of classical music. Artists found that there was less advantage to an affiliation with a major label, and went out and made recordings on their own -- from classical stars such as violinist Gil Shaham to the pianist Simone Dinnerstein and other free agents. Institutions learned to sell tickets on their Web sites, and the Metropolitan Opera broke ground with its live HD broadcasts, a new way to bring high-class classical music to a wider audience. And while YouTube created a symphony orchestra, its real service lay in making a treasure-trove of great recordings available to a young audience.

For more on these and other items and events, go to the website, kbaq.org; be listening each week at this time for another update; and join me every weekday at noon for The Mozart Buffet, an hour of music by Mozart and his contemporaries. I’m Randy Kinkel for “This week in Classical Music” on 89.5 KBAQ Phoenix, a service of Rio Salado college and Arizona State University.