Awards,
Gramophone Awards - the winners!
The category-winners of this year's Gramophone Awards have just been announced this morning: many familiar faces here, as Christian Gerhaher's Schubert recital pips his own disc of Mahler Lieder to the post in the Vocal category and the Pavel Haas Quartet scoop the Chamber Music award for the second year running. Claudio Abbado's Bruckner Nine (recorded as part of his final concert) takes the Orchestral laurels - a fitting posthumous honour for an irreplaceable artist.
The overall Record of the Year will be announced on 17th September at the Awards Ceremony at St John's Smith Square, as will the Lifetime Achievement Award and other special prizes.
Baroque Instrumental
"David Watkin’s profound musicianship is more than enough to accelerate this recording of Bach’s Cello Suites to the top of the tiny league of “definitive” recordings."
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Baroque Vocal
"The resonant yet exquisitely transparent acoustic weaves its spellbinding magic on the single voices and accomplished instrumentalists of Concerto Italiano, who navigate their way skilfully through the grandeur, intimacy, rhetorical drama and textural subtlety that the music demands at the drop of a hat."
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chamber
"This is the kind of disc that makes record reviewing the best job in the world."
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Choral
Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius & Sea Pictures
Stuart Skelton, Sarah Connolly, David Soar, BBC Symphony Chorus & BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis
"A superbly paced and lovingly shaped Prelude immediately proclaims Sir Andrew Davis’s formidable credentials in this repertoire; indeed, his patient and scrupulously observant conception of the whole work evinces a selfless authority, wisdom and instinctive ebb and flow."
Available Formats: 2 SACDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Concerto
Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 3 & 4
Maria João Pires, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Harding
"Here you sense that [Pires] is among those truly great artists who, in Charles Rosen’s words, appear to do so little and end by doing everything.’"
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Contemporary
"Great to see this superabundantly imaginative music being taken up by an institution as traditionally minded as the Vienna Philharmonic. … Dacapo’s recording is as beautiful as the … playing."
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Early Music
"What we have here is a complete recording of the entire choirbook in its manuscript order: 34 four-voice motets from the first decade of the [16th] century by French and Franco-Flemish composers, giving a magnificent panorama of the repertory. Most of the music is performed by the mixed voices alone, a small group sounding gorgeous throughout."
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Instrumental
"At every turn, [Anderszewski] harnesses the possibilities of the piano in the service of Bach; the result is a clear labour of love, and one in which he shines new light on old music to mesmerising effect, all of which is captured by a warmly sympathetic recording."
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Opera
Strauss: Elektra
Evelyn Herlitzius, Adrianne Pieczonka, Waltraud Meier, Orchestre de Paris, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Patrice Chéreau
"It is Herlitzius’s performance and the finely detailed, well-balanced conducting of Esa-Pekka Salonen (allied to brilliantly clear and exciting playing from the Orchestre de Paris) that are the main selling points of the DVD release."
Available Format: DVD Video
Orchestral
"Abbado in Lucerne radiates clarity, wisdom and vision, qualities that over the years one had come to expect of him."
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Recital
"This is a brilliantly planned and executed, musically illustrated biography of Marie Fel, one of the great 18th-century divas … The longer we listen to Sampson’s voice, the more she seems to inhabit the aura of Fel, clearly a skilled and charismatic yet deeply affecting performer."
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
