BROADCHURCH composer Ólafur Arnalds has scooped his first number one classical album with his new release.

He rose to the top of the UK’s Classical Charts with The Chopin Project – a collaboration with pianist Alice Sara Ott.

It reached the top of the iTunes classical charts in 25 other countries, including France, Italy, Finland, Chile, Brazil, Hong Kong and Singapore.

The new album features Chopin’s music reimagined by Olafur and performed on a variety of keyboard instruments including a tinkly piano in a busy pub, piano wires prepared with felt, and surrounded by synthesizers and strings. It was recorded using vintage equipment and includes creaks, breaths, jangling piano strings, rustles of paper – in other words, the sounds of ‘real life’ which are usually removed from classical recordings.

He said: “From The Beatles onwards, non-classical recording technology has been used as part of the composition and performance process – but this has never happened in classical music, which still strives for an impossible ‘invisibility’. But why not use the technology we have not only as a tool, but as part of the actual interpretation? Why can’t the microphones, the room – the sound – ¬also be the performer?”

The album is available now.