King Charles III’s love of classical music

The musical tastes of King Charles III are more sophisticated than those of our late Queen. That’s not being rude: it’s just a fact. Her favourite musician appears to have been George Formby, whose chirpy songs she knew by heart. No doubt she relished their double entendres – but the hint of smut meant that, to her regret, she had to decline the presidency of the George Formby Society.

Our new monarch, by contrast, adores the Piano Concerto in E flat major by Julius Benedict (1804-85). He recommended it in an interview a couple of years ago. I’d never heard of the piece, which existed only in manuscript until Howard Shelley and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra recorded it for Hyperion in 2008. So I have our new king to thank for alerting me to this gorgeous confection – not quite a masterpiece, but full of pretty tunes connected by glittering filigree passagework that wears the poor pianist’s fingers to the bone.

I also didn’t know of the existence of Scylla et Glaucus, the only opera by Jean-Marie Leclair, an 18th-century French composer of violin sonatas. The then Prince of Wales chose a scene from it when he appeared on Michael Berkeley’s Private Passions on Radio 3 in 2010, describing it as ‘incredibly rhythmic and exciting’ and ‘one of those bits of music that put a spring in your step when you’re feeling a little bit down’.

Sometimes the guests on these programmes are bluffing about their love of highbrow music chosen for them by someone else. (I once had to come up with ‘personal favourites’ for a tin-eared guest.) But the King’s problem will have been the opposite: whittling down his most beloved pieces to a shortlist.