Darren Henley - The Ultimate Classic FM Hall of Fame: The Greatest Classical Music of All Time

Back in 1996, when the Classic FM Hall of Fame launched, no one could have predicted the extraordinary popularity and longevity of this countdown. Two decades later, and the worlds biggest annual survey of classical music tastes is more diverse, more surprising and more popular than ever, with over three million votes having been cast in the last twenty years.

The voting process is a very simple one: at the start of every calendar year, we invite our listeners to tell us their three favourite pieces of classical music online at ClassicFM.com, over the phone or by good old-fashioned snail mail. Three points are assigned to each first choice; two to the second; and one to the third. And from that, we collate a chart of 300 pieces of classical music, spanning over 500 years, which we reveal across the Easter weekend. The process of fitting all 300 choices into a forty-eight-hour period, whilst also taking account of hourly news bulletins, commercial breaks and presenter commentary, is a Herculean task and our team of producers always breathe a happy sigh of relief when we reach 9 p.m. on Easter Monday.

When we passed the fifteen-year milestone, we published the first book about our chart. Called simply The Classic FM Hall of Fame, it outlined an aggregated top 300, from 1996 through to 2000 and it proved extremely popular, selling over 20,000 copies within the first few months of publication. Now, with two decades of Classic FM Halls of Fame behind us, we thought it timely to provide an updated and refreshed book, which will hopefully be an even more rewarding read than the first version.

The 300 pieces covered here mirror The Ultimate Classic FM Hall of Fame, which we revealed on-air in August 2015. And in case youre wondering how a chart that started in 1996 could celebrate its twentieth anniversary in 2015, not 2016, its simply because that is the year in which the twentieth Classic FM Hall of Fame occurred. We took the annual top 300 from 1996 to 2015 and created a new chart, based on each works relative position in the twenty countdowns. That means that all the works that have seen their popularity ebb and flow over the two decades since the Classic FM Hall of Fame began, receive a chart position based on their achievements over the full period. New works entering the Classic FM Hall of Fame in more recent years in many cases because they were only written in the last decade or so are more likely to appear further down, because they dont benefit from listeners votes in the early years of the countdown.

During the first five years of our 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 Number 1 spot with his Violin Concerto No. 1. At Number 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 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 FMs listeners voted Rachmaninovs 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 this pieces spell at the top, Rachmaninov was a constant bridesmaid to Bruchs bride, taking the Number 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 Number 1 was short-lived, with our first English work topping the poll in 2007, when Vaughan Williams climbed to Number 1 with his beautifully wistful The Lark Ascending. It marks an enormous success for a piece of music that made its chart debut at Number 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, only three of the four works that have held the Number 1 position in our annual charts take the top four positions in our ultimate countdown. The continued popularity and high placing of Rachmaninovs Piano Concerto No. 2 mean it is crowned victorious as the UKs favourite classical work; and while in the first book, after fifteen years of the chart, it was Mozarts Clarinet Concerto that appeared in second place, that position is now held by Vaughan Williamss The Lark Ascending. Mozart falls to Number 3 and at Number 4, we find Beethovens Piano Concerto No. 5 (Emperor): a piece which has never made it to Number 1 in any annual countdown, but which has always hovered near enough to the top spot, and is hence rewarded for its consistency.

No round-up of the Classic FM Hall of Fame would be complete without mention of movie music and, in particular, that of John Williams, whose five entries in our aggregated chart, including Schindlers List and Star Wars, put him well ahead of any other film composer. Another of Williamss soundtrack successes, Harry Potter, together with Howard Shores music from Lord of the Rings, are relative newcomers to the Classic FM Hall of Fame, both having been released since we began our series of charts in 1996. 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 Number 134. The haunting voice of Miriam Stockley performing Karl Jenkins 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 Bizets 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, Handels 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 is the music of the eighteenth-century Italian Jesuit priest Domenico Zipoli, and in particular his beautiful Elevazione. Meanwhile, Arvo Prts deeply minimalist music, such as Spiegel im Spiegel, has grown in popularity since the countdown first aired, while the Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi (