First look: Apple Music Classical, great app for music fans

Great app

If you listen to classical music, you’ll already be familiar with the big difference between the information you need to choose great tracks in the genre and what you need to do the same thing in most other forms of popular music.

There’s a way to listen to classical music that wasn’t so well articulated digitally, but now Apple has the service to tick many of those boxes.

My day in classical music land

I’m probably more familiar with Bowie, Blur, Primal Scream, Jane’s Addiction and Motorhead (spot my age) than I am with classical music. I’m not completely tone deaf, however, and I do listen to classics and have done all my life. Mozart, a little Beethoven, Sibelius, Satie, Vivaldi – the world has so much beautiful music, it really helps take your mind off the mundane and horrible things the world also has, such as Keir Starmer.

Apple’s new Music Classical service has so much for real classical music buffs as well as the idly curious, like me.

Not only is it available as an app for free if you have an Apple Music account, but it brings all the metadata even the most ardent lover of the genre requires. You have search by numerous terms, album art, good audio quality (in theory, let down by Bluetooth, though I think this will change), and excellent playlists and educational content.

Roll over…

Learn while you listen

If you want to learn more about the genre, you can use Apple Music Classical as a guide to your learning journey.

I really like the composer biographies and the many in-depth descriptions of thousands of works. I’ve spent the day exploring music by multiple orchestras, composers, recording companies and more and the experience has been highly fulfilling.

I’ve enjoyed finding exclusive tracks, and also got a kick out of finding modern classical composers such as Richter within the collection. It’s good music to tired ears.

The user interface is highly visual and really simple, there’s tones of metadata options – movements, tracks, different orchestras, conductors, and soloists; and many composers have their own special catalog classifications. When you search for something, you’ll find all the recordings of that work, along with an Editor’s Choice performance. And searching for a composer displays all available works.

Some real delights in here

Apple Music has also worked with some of the world’s greatest classical orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, Opéra national de Paris, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Vienna Philharmonic — to create new and exclusive recordings for the service.

The Editor’s Choice’s and premade playlists (all 700 of them) are incredibly useful. They act as excellent curated guides through the entire history of this music, and I’ve heard some beautiful things as a result of them.

With over 5 million tracks, the service claims to offer the world’s largest classical music catalog, covering the whole spectrum of the genre.

If you don’t know much about the genre, do take a look at the hidden gems and Story of Classical audio guides, which teach so much about the people behind the music.

There’s also behind the scenes information, audio commentaries and lots about undiscovered composers. I’ve always been a fan of Joseph Bologne and you can hear his work in here, too. You can also build your own collections. When you do, you can add albums, tracks, playlists, and artists as well as things like composers, and recordings.

Some tech stuff: Apple Music Classical features lossless audio of up to 24 bit/192 kHz. It has a Hi-Res Lossless mode and Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos. Apple says it’s adding new tracks weekly in that format.

More to come

There’s exciting news too, in that Apple Music Classical will host several live performances featuring the world’s best orchestras at Apple Store locations worldwide as part of the Today at Apple programming from March 2023. Frankly, I think these will be great.

Do I have a criticism?

Definitely. Apple says the service will be coming to Android in future (good), but I’d really like to see it made available to iPads and Macs. The latter, in particular, would be a huge benefit to classical music fans, who’d no doubt link their computers up to truly outstanding music playback systems, sit back, and watch history play itself by their dreaming.

Good app. Free if you use Apple Music. You can’t really lose.

Please follow me on Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.