Verve Label Group is feeling particularly animated about revered Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi’s new album, A Symphonic Celebration. The project, which features his music from the Studio Ghibli films of legendary director Hayao Miyazaki, has topped the classical charts and enjoyed the second best-selling week of 2023 on the classical crossover chart, behind only Def Leppard’s Drastic Symphonies.

As fans of Miyazaki's magical work are well aware, films like Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle and Princess Mononoke are among the most beloved animated features of the last half-century—and their impact would have been severely diminished without Hisaishi's sweeping, yearning, deeply evocative scores.

A Symphonic Celebration was marketed less as a classical title and more as a special package for Hisaishi’s devoted fans, with multiple vinyl iterations as well as a very limited “mystery” gift bundle with an autographed item.

Buoyed by subsidiaries Decca and Deutsche Grammophon, Verve Label Group remains the top classical label in the U.S. and routinely claims more than 70% of the top 10 most consumed classical tracks every week. Classical music has enjoyed a significant streaming bump over the last several years, and by some estimates has outpaced the growth of the overall streaming market.

In other classical-meets-animation news, we await a 180-gram edition of the Bugs Bunny-Elmer Fudd concert.