#classic fm

The way it works is this: Classic FM, the radio station for people who quite like classical music but don't want to listen to anything too weird or challenging (i.e. me) does a massive survey of its listeners every year to find their favourite pieces of music.

Then over four days, they count down all the way from number 300 to number 1, which will almost certainly be Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto number 2 or Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending (though I personally am holding out a small hope for Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, which was number 3 last year).

It's both fun (four days of reliably good classical music) and kind of fascinating to me as an insight into what a particular slice of classical music listeners - mostly British people aged 50+ with solidly popular/middlebrow tastes - are currently into. It changes very little year-on-year, which lots of people hate about it, but which in my view makes the small changes even more fascinating - like in 2023 when barely anyone voted for Wagner. There's gradually more film music and more diverse composers every year. In 2013, there was a big campaign that saw the Final Fantasy soundtrack make it to number 3.

classicfm Richard Armitage – aka Thorin Oakenshield – looks back on music from The Hobbit...

classicfm: Is a career change on the cards for Paul Bettany? 👀

The actor, who plays Antonio Salieri in the new ‘Amadeus’ series, shared how he felt when he realised he was conducting the ‘Lacrimosa’ from Mozart’s Requiem for the first time.

classicfm: How does a conductor know what to conduct? 🤔 Gabrielle Creevy, who plays Constanze Mozart, quizzes Amadeus co-stars Paul Bettany and Will Sharpe on learning to conduct for the new TV series.