Apple Music Classical promises ‘the very best classical music streaming experience’

Apple Music Classical has taken 18 months to develop following the company’s acquisition of streaming service Primephonic in 2021. The result is a totally new app featuring more content and features than any other rival. Whereas Idagio and Spotify each offer a catalogue of around 2 million classical tracks, Apple Music Classical already boasts 5 million tracks, including exclusive content from partner organisations such as the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra and New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Artist curated playlists are also available from the likes of Yo-Yo Ma, Hilary Hahn, Lang Lang, Joyce DiDonato, Joshua Bell and Sheku Kanneh-Mason.

‘We love music – that’s really what we’re all about – and classical music is foundational to music of all genres,’ says Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music and Beats. ‘Apple Music Classical is a dedicated app that is great for classical experts as well as anyone who is new to classical, with the largest classical music selection in the world, the very best search and browse capabilities, the most premium sound experience with Spatial Audio, and thousands of exclusive recordings. We believe this is the very best classical music streaming experience available anywhere, and for us, this is just the beginning.’

The lion’s share of investment in the new app has gone on solving the challenge of classical music’s metadata, which Apple says is ‘unique and sophisticated as compared with other genres such as pop’. This is due to the fact that multiple artists have recorded the same music, while some artists have made multiple recordings of the same work. The new app, says Apple, features ‘a completely new database for every classical composed work’ comprising over 50 million data points that span 115,000+ unique works by 20,000+ composers.

For listeners, this makes it easy to locate specific recordings using many different search terms, from the names of composers, performers and works to instrumentation and even catalogue numbers. Nicknames of well-known pieces (such as Shostakovich’s ‘Leningrad’ Symphony or Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’) are also searchable in English and other languages.

Violinist Hilary Hahn (pictured below) describes this is ‘a really positive change’. In the past when looking for recordings online she says she had ‘to search very intentionally, and even when I know about a recording that exists, I often can’t find it.’

Hilary Hahn ©Dana van Leeuwen/Decca

To put the new app to the test I decided to run a search for ‘French horn’, the instrument I played as a student. The results do not disappoint. A whole section within the app is dedicated to horn repertoire and performers, beginning with an ‘Editor’s Choice’ selection of 24 solo and orchestral works by some of its finest exponents. Next come ‘Popular Artists’ and ‘Popular Works’, and finally a short profile of the instrument encapsulating its history and unique qualities in two succinct paragraphs.

Clicking on ‘See All Works’ takes me to the full catalogue of horn repertoire within the app – literally hundreds of works ranging from Handel’s F major Concerto HWV33 to contemporary works by Jörg Widmann, Eleanor Alberga and Kalevi Aho. Interestingly, this list is neither ordered chronologically nor alphabetically, and gives no precedence to any particular work, artist or recording. Rather the aim is to let the listener take their own journey through the repertoire on offer.

Radiohead lead guitarist, keyboard player and composer Jonny Greenwood explains the thinking behind this approach: ‘I had a music teacher at school who said he hated Mendelssohn and found it boring. Before this I never knew you were allowed to have opinions about music! So I always tell people not to be put off by things you don’t like. On the other hand, there’s a whole universe of music to discover in the classical world. For example, this morning I searched Apple Music Classical for “requiem”, which is a genre I love, and I discovered a requiem by Schnittke that I never knew existed. With the app there are a lot of tunnels you can go down – it’s really exciting way to make new discoveries.’

Putting the app to the test for a second time, I run a search for ‘K488’ and up comes Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 23 in A major. But scrolling through the ‘All Albums’ list I’m unable to find my favourite recording by Mitsuko Uchida and the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Jeffrey Tate, so I modify my search. This time I try ‘K488 Uchida’, which yields no result. By contrast, using these search terms in Spotify takes me straight to the recording I want. Hopefully such teething troubles will shortly be resolved by the team at Apple.

Newcomers to classical music are well catered for by the new app, not least through the nine-part audio guide The Story of Classical narrated by Apple’s global head of classical editorial, Guy Jones. Listeners keen to go deeper will enjoy the ‘track by track’ exploration of key repertoire led by artists such as pianist Víkingur Ólafsson, violinist Rachel Podger and cellist Abel Selaocoe.

All content available via the Apple Music Classical app can be heard in lossless audio of up to 24 bit/192 kHz, while thousands of tracks are also offered in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos. The only catch is that Bluetooth headphones don’t currently support lossless audio, so to experience Apple Music Classical at its best you’ll need to listen via wired headphones.

The final word must go to cellist Yo-Yo Ma. ‘Classical music, like all culture, is about connecting,’ he explains. ‘What’s better than an app that helps make those connections more possible, to get people to be more curious, to re-explore the familiar, and to look forward to the unexpected?’

Apple Music Classical is available for download on the App Store everywhere Apple Music is offered, excluding China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey. The app is available for all iPhone models running iOS 15.4 or later – Android version coming soon.