X Factor responsible for yet another Nos 1 – this time it's a real classic

Published on Monday 28 December 2009 21:35

TO A generation of Seventies men it was the music that sold them Old Spice aftershave and it was later used to terrify cinema goers during horror movie The Omen.

More recently it has been the dramatic classical music that welcomes the judges on stage in The X Factor.

Now O Fortuna has been named the UK's most widely heard classical track since records began.

Carl Orff's composition from his 1937 oratorio Carmina Burana topped a list of the most played classical recordings of the past 75 years.

Second place in the list – compiled for BBC Radio 2 by royalties collection body PPL from songs played on TV, radio, online streaming and in public places such as shops – went to Vaughan Williams' Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis.

The top 30 most played works over the past three quarters of a century were revealed in Radio 2 programme The People's Classical Chart yesterday, presented by comic and musician Bill Bailey.

German composer Orff's chart-topper was inspired by a medieval Latin poem and the stirring, slightly sinister-sounding tune has been featured in anything from Michael Jackson tours to adverts and movies.

However, it has become best known in recent years as a tension builder for hit ITV1 talent show The X Factor. The Munich Radio Orchestra's recording of O Fortuna from 1973, featuring the Bavarian Radio Chorus & Tolzer Children's Choir, is the one which has been most played, according to PPL.

Bailey said: "Of course, we all knew the No 1 would be a 13th century Latin goliardic poem."

And classical buff Stephen Fry, one of the contributors to the show, added: "For some reason, it almost sounds satanic, although it's actually a religious piece."

Williams' famous Fantasia – another 20th century composition – was notably featured in the Russell Crowe seafaring epic Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World, as well as TV coverage of the Oxford-Cambridge boat race.

It is a 1986 recording by the London Philharmonic, conducted by Bernard Haitink, which claims second spot.

Third place went to a 1990 recording of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade by the London Symphony Orchestra.

Australian conductor Sir Charles Mackerras said he was "delighted" the work had received so much play.

The most featured work in the top 30 is Gustav Holst's The Planets, with four different recordings, including one by Manchester's Halle Orchestra – who recently recorded with rock band Elbow – at number eight.

Britain's Philharmonia Orchestra was the ensemble with most recordings in the top 30 with four.

TOP 20 CLASSICS

1 Orff – O Fortuna From Carmina Burana

2 Vaughan Williams – Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis

3 Rimsky-Korsakov – Scheherazade

4 Tchaikovsky – The Sleeping Beauty

5 Schumann – Romance In F Sharp Major Op 28/2

6 Delibes – Sylvia

7 Rachmaninov – Symphony No 2

8 Holst – The Planets (James Loughran)

9 Tchaikovsky – The Sleeping Beauty

10 Schubert – Symphony No 5

11 Rachmaninov – Piano Concerto No 2

12 Bizet – Carmen

13 Holst – The Planets (John Eliot Gardiner)

14 Vaughan Williams – The Lark Ascending

15 Zipoli – Elevazione For Cello And Oboe

16 Beethoven – Symphony No 6, Pastoral

17 Grieg – Piano Concerto

18 Tchaikovsky – Swan Lake

19 Litolff – Scherzo (From Concerto Symphonique No 4)

20 Holst – The Planets (Simon Rattle)