Apple Music Classical review: Bittersweet symphony is over as new app launched

Apple Music Classical brings a long-needed and intuitive digital approach to the genre. Even the most finicky aficionados will be delighted.

Apple Music Classical is heaven for classical music lovers

Pity the classical-music fan in the age of streaming, an arts lover forever trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. From jumbled search results to incomplete listings, the experience of finding what one wanted to hear has been annoyingly chaotic. Yet such frustrations may soon be mere memories. The release last month of a dedicated classical-music app suggests that a new era is about to begin, at least in terms of ease of use.

Dully but forthrightly titled Apple Music Classical, the new app, which is included with all Apple Music subscriptions but not available on its own, at long last organises such things as symphonies, concertos, string quartets, art-song cycles, operas, etc – and (to a greater or lesser degree) their respective movements, arias, overtures and acts – into a format that is both intuitive and consistent with categories music lovers have relied on since the dawn of commercial recording some 125 years ago.

Searches for conductors, instrumentalists, singers and ensembles are also much easier, though not everything is ordered in the most logical way. Take, for example, a 10-volume series of recordings by the esteemed Danish tenor Aksel Schiotz, which at this moment appears mystifyingly out of numerical sequence.

The standard approach to most music search engines has been just that: standard. Till now, little, if any, distinction has been made between, say, the Beatles’ She’s Leaving Home or Frank Sinatra singing Angel Eyes and Beethoven’s four-movement Symphony No. 7. All three are typically lumped into a category broadly labelled “Song”. Yet the difference between an actual song and a multi-movement orchestral work is vast, which is no doubt why search results for classical titles have typically been – let’s be kind – imprecise, and definitely not comprehensive.

Some may wonder what all the fuss is about, but such folks probably haven’t struggled with finding specific classical works via streaming.

If they had, the most popular interfaces likely quashed such interest with their often-confusing, seemingly random suggestions. An especially unfortunate outcome is that most people are probably unaware just how many musical treasures are, in fact, available via streaming – if you can locate them.

Apple has long ignored the issue of its search function’s inadequacy regarding classical music, as have other major streaming services, perhaps hoping that a way could be found, some day, to accommodate both classical and non-classical searches within a single engine. Such a day never came.

But to its credit, Apple finally accepted that reality. And in August 2021, it acquired a niche service dedicated to classical music, Primephonic. Apple then merged its vast content and general industry firepower with Primephonic’s classical know-how to create, ta-da, Apple Music Classical.

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The app also preserves the joys of the not-too-precise (or “fuzzy”) search.

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Initial impressions suggest that even the most finicky aficionados will be delighted. Apple Music Classical’s library claims to hold more than 115,000 different works and some 1.2 million recordings at present – most of which have been long available, if impossible to find, within Apple Music. (To be clear: Those who still wish to search for classical titles within Apple Music may continue to do so, as both apps rely on the same database.) The range of repertory is vast, covering everything from Gregorian chant to Julius Eastman and Caroline Shaw. Broad, too, is the scope of recordings offered, with new releases, benchmark performances and historical treasures listed alongside each other.

More seasoned music lovers will appreciate the opportunity to search for works by specialised catalogue numbers, including BWV (Bach), Hob. (Haydn), K. (Mozart), Kk. (Scarlatti) and RV (Vivaldi). Likewise, novices may opt for the “Browse” function, where various subgroups (Composers, Periods, Ensembles etc.) lead down engrossing rabbit holes.

Choosing “Soloists,” though, ought to delight both old hands and newbies, for here lie many of the masters of classical-music expression, artists like the pianists Arthur Rubinstein, Sviatoslav Richter and Walter Gieseking; the singers Enrico Caruso, ­Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Renata Tebaldi and Leonard Warren; and the violinists Jascha Heifetz, Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern.

Apple Music Classical redesigned search with the complexities of classical music in mind.

The Browse tab in Apple Music Classical encourages listeners to explore and find new favourites.

Among the more exciting aspects of the app are Apple’s partnerships with institutions like the Metropolitan Opera, Vienna Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra, which are now providing exclusive content to the service.

One of those items is an extraordinary account of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Franz Welser-Most, recorded during the pandemic.

And recent recordings of three Shostakovich symphonies (Nos. 8 through 10) with the Berlin Philharmonic and its music director, Kirill Petrenko, are equally revelatory in their way.

Apple’s valuable “Track by Track” feature intersperses music with commentary from the performers themselves (including the violinist Hilary Hahn and the pianist Vikingur Olafsson), providing a rare opportunity for ordinary listeners to connect with artists they admire.

Apple Music Classical also preserves the joys of the not-too-precise (or “fuzzy”) search. Type in “La Boheme”, and you’ll find not only Puccini’s enduring version, but also Leoncavallo’s near-contemporaneous but largely forgotten take on the story – to say nothing of Robert Stolz’s charming operetta Zauber der Boheme.

Apple Music Classical features exclusive brand-new artwork, including unique, high-resolution digital portraits for many of the world’s greatest composers.

Naturally, there’s room for improvement in an undertaking so vast, and Apple says it wants users to alert it to errors and suggest improvements. A good place to start would be the interface for complete operas, in which singers and their voice types are given but not their roles. Mavens may know who’s singing what, but few others will.

For the moment, Apple Music Classical is designed specifically for Apple’s iPhone, though a version for Android is promised shortly. Those wanting to use the app on an iPad or Apple computer will, frustratingly, have to wait, but iterations of the app for those devices are said to be forthcoming.

Churls aren’t wrong for carping at how long it has taken Apple to develop a service that should have been around since streaming’s advent.

But let’s not dwell on the past. Instead, classical-music lovers should embrace the change – even if it really is just what we’ve been asking for all along.