Classic FM Hall of Fame 2007
And so another Easter weekend passes, bringing with it the latest Classic FM Hall of Fame – the top 300 pieces of classical music as voted for by the listeners. And what do we find? Well in some respects the listing has improved since I wrote this analysis of it back in 2002, inasmuch as the top 3 pieces this year are all works that I featured in my own Desert Island Discs-style listings – namely Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, Elgar’s Cello Concerto and Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto – and the work which is probably still my favourite piece of all time – Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis – is in the top 10 (just) for the first time.
Also, since I compiled my Top 10 favourites back in the day, the Howard Shore soundtrack(s) to The Lord of the Rings trilogy has come onto the scene and if I were to re-work my Desert Island Disc choices, some portion of that work (probably the Return of the King disc) must surely feature. In the Hall of Fame it is to be found at number 55 and is the highest-placed film soundtrack.
But it has to be said, when you analyse this Classic FM chart there is quite frankly way too much Beethoven! (4 of his symphonies and 1 piano concerto in the top 20 alone.) Why does this guy’s work have this mass-appeal that makes the general public rate him so highly? There’s also just as much Mozart – same question applies. Is it just that there are a lot of people out there who have only really heard of these 2 guys and therefore they get the votes? There are some fantastic composers out there who haven’t had a look-in in this chart – Moeran or Scriabin for example – and, whilst RVW’s popular Lark Ascending may have been the most-voted for work, only 2 of his symphonies are in the top 300 and they’re both near the bottom end.
There does of course still exist the “self-fulfilling prophecy” argument that I wrote about 5 years back, i.e. that, if your only knowledge of classical music were to derive from listening to Classic FM, you would become very familiar with the particular works and particular composers that receive a lot of air-time and you are likely therefore to choose your top 3 from this limited subset. Then the radio station spends the next 12 months playing these same tracks again because they’re “the ones the listeners voted for”.
In general Classic FM tends to play single movements from symphonies or concerti, rather than whole works – often the slow movements or “chillout classics” to use modern parlance – and I for one think that the true measure of a symphony can only be assessed by listening to the whole work from start to finish. If it’s got a few catchy tunes here and there but is mostly pants then it shouldn’t feature highly in such a chart – but voters aren’t required to know the whole work in order to vote, they need only know the bite-size chunk that the radio station has fed them.
So, it’s time to set things straight. As soon as voting is opened up for the 2008 Hall of Fame, I urge absolutely everyone who reads this to cast the following identical votes:
Moeran’s Symphony in G minor
Shostakovich - Symphony no. 12 (“The Year 1917”)
Scriabin – Piano Concerto in F sharp minor
and let’s give Mozart and Beethoven the good kicking they deserve.
Also, since I compiled my Top 10 favourites back in the day, the Howard Shore soundtrack(s) to The Lord of the Rings trilogy has come onto the scene and if I were to re-work my Desert Island Disc choices, some portion of that work (probably the Return of the King disc) must surely feature. In the Hall of Fame it is to be found at number 55 and is the highest-placed film soundtrack.
But it has to be said, when you analyse this Classic FM chart there is quite frankly way too much Beethoven! (4 of his symphonies and 1 piano concerto in the top 20 alone.) Why does this guy’s work have this mass-appeal that makes the general public rate him so highly? There’s also just as much Mozart – same question applies. Is it just that there are a lot of people out there who have only really heard of these 2 guys and therefore they get the votes? There are some fantastic composers out there who haven’t had a look-in in this chart – Moeran or Scriabin for example – and, whilst RVW’s popular Lark Ascending may have been the most-voted for work, only 2 of his symphonies are in the top 300 and they’re both near the bottom end.
There does of course still exist the “self-fulfilling prophecy” argument that I wrote about 5 years back, i.e. that, if your only knowledge of classical music were to derive from listening to Classic FM, you would become very familiar with the particular works and particular composers that receive a lot of air-time and you are likely therefore to choose your top 3 from this limited subset. Then the radio station spends the next 12 months playing these same tracks again because they’re “the ones the listeners voted for”.
In general Classic FM tends to play single movements from symphonies or concerti, rather than whole works – often the slow movements or “chillout classics” to use modern parlance – and I for one think that the true measure of a symphony can only be assessed by listening to the whole work from start to finish. If it’s got a few catchy tunes here and there but is mostly pants then it shouldn’t feature highly in such a chart – but voters aren’t required to know the whole work in order to vote, they need only know the bite-size chunk that the radio station has fed them.
So, it’s time to set things straight. As soon as voting is opened up for the 2008 Hall of Fame, I urge absolutely everyone who reads this to cast the following identical votes:
Moeran’s Symphony in G minor
Shostakovich - Symphony no. 12 (“The Year 1917”)
Scriabin – Piano Concerto in F sharp minor
and let’s give Mozart and Beethoven the good kicking they deserve.
Labels: classical music, classicfm
posted by voller at
6:22 PM
3 Comments:
Any Finzi in the hall-of-fame? The popularity of film soundtracks is a curious thing. If I made a music video to accompany Elgar's Dream of Gerontius for example, would that suddenly surge in popularity? What's wrong with "chillout classics" anyway - claiming to like only symphonies divided into three movements of around 10-15 minutes each is just as arbitrary.
It seems to me that commercial classical music radio just doesn't seem to work. In fact, commercial radio of any type except bland middle of the road pop, oldies, or talk radio doesn't seem to work in the UK. All I can say is thank f*** we have Radio 3. The BBC might be a pain in the arse a lot of the time but life without them barely bears thinking about.
2 bits of Finzi feature - both in the lower part of the chart. Eclogue is one (a favourite of Mrs Broome Saunders, I believe) at no.291 and his clarinet concerto at no. 226
I really like his piece The Fall of the Leaf - but that doesn't feature at all sadly.
Agreeing with giroscoper's comment on the importance of Radio 3, it's only on that station that you're likely to hear such wonderful composers as the likes of Finzi, Bax, Moeran etc. I don't think Classic FM touch them with a barge-pole.
On the point about whole symphonies against movements, I'm not against liking only part of a symphony per se, and there are no doubt works out there that feature fantastic slower movements but whose quicker movements are uninspiring (any suggestions?), but perhaps the chart should have a mechanism by which voters indicate precisely what they are voting for, i.e. the slow movement of ...
I'm guessing that the reason Mahler's 5th symphony is his highest ranking work is due to the popularity of its Adagietto movement - featured on many a Classical Chillout compilation. Now as it happens I think the whole symphony is great, but if some voters are voting purely for the Adagietto then they should be able to say so and this fact be reflected somehow.
If any of this really matters, that is...
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