Joshua Bell's Voice of the Violin remains at no. 1, and his Sony BMG Classical compilation The Essential Joshua Bell rose from fifth to fourth place. (The Universal Classics compilation of the same title, at no. 14 last week, has now slipped off the chart.) Yo-Yo Ma's Appassionato is still in second place, followed by Sting's John Dowland CD Songs From the Labyrinth. (The companion DVD/CD set, The Journey & the Labyrinth: The Music of John Dowland, slipped from no. 7 to no. 10.) Crossover violinist Andr_ Rieu's The Homecoming! went from fourth to fifth place; Anna Netrebko's Russian Album remains at no. 6 (though its ranking may rise next week in the wake of Netrebko's appearance on the Time 100 list).
The news from this week's Billboard classical crossover chart is that Josh Groban's Awake has been nudged out of the no. 1 slot after 24 consectuive weeks. The new top-of-the-list title is Il Divo's Siempre, which has been at no. 2 for several months. Awake is now in second place, followed by Il Divo's Ancora. Next on the chart are three discs in a row by blind tenor Andrea Bocelli: Amore, Under the Desert Sky and Amor. Showtime!, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's show tunes disc, fell from no. 6 to no. 12.
There were no new entrants to this week's crossover chart, though there are half a dozen returnees: Love, From Italy (no. 16) by Andiamo, the Italian equivalent of Il Divo; Here's to the Heroes (no. 18) by The Ten Tenors; Irish tenor Ronan Tynan's The Dawning of the Day (no. 19); the self-titled release by The East Village Opera Company (no. 21); Love Changes Everything (no. 22), volume 2 of The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection; and Strung Out on Three Days Grace (no. 25), a "string quartet tribute" to the rock band.
