16th August 2017

Awards, Gramophone Awards 2017 - the top three in each category

by Chris O'Reilly

Gramophone Awards 2017 - the top three in each category With the fortieth Gramophone Awards ceremony just four weeks away, we bring you details of the whittled-down shortlist - the three remaining recordings battling it out in each of the dozen categories...

You can browse Gramophone's devoted digimag featuring full reviews of all 72 long-listed titles here.

Baroque Instrumental

'A fresh, zinging tone alive with vitality and enjoyment, an effortless easy panache from both ensemble and soloists...underpinned by a scholarly attittude to programming and performance style which is yet worn with a light grace.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'Solomon takes centre stage...but my ears were drawn equally to the sympathetic continuo-playing of theorbist David Miller and harpsichordist Terence Charlston.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC

'These are performances that burst with life, and right from the unaccompanied sparring between the soloists at the beginning of the first track.'

Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Baroque Vocal

'The dominant virtue in this fine collaboration between the outstanding Davies and Arcangelo lies in an unsentimental perspicacity, reassuring in its intelligence and deep sensitivity.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'A thoughtfully moulded, expertly executed and deeply committed reading...I believe it to be one of [Gardiner's] finest achievements.'

Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'In every way, a fitting end to their journey...the vivid atmosphere of Agnew’s performance is palpable and, as so often in these discs, his text-driven subtlety wins over.'

Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Chamber

'The Danish are remarkable, as ever – capable of intense blend, extreme dynamic variation (in which they seem glued together), perfect intonation even on harmonics, and constant vitality and flow.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'A compelling portrait of a powerfully original creative spirit...the whole group seem to understand this life-affirming music from the inside.'

Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC

'The Nash ensemble have a natural feeling for the music's ebb and flow, and while they're not afraid of big gestures and the bite of horsehair and rosin, they play beautifully as an ensemble.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Choral

'Niquet brings fresh artistry and specifically French authority honed over decades with Le Concert Spirituel to both works. For me, this is a prize-winning disc.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'McCreesh and his massed Anglo-Polish forces have given us a Seasons that thrillingly catches both the work's bucolic exhilaration and its invocations of the sublime. And for sheer sonic splendour it's in a class of its own.'

Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'The choir are well drilled and the two female soloists are matched as well as any on disc...Suzuki is no speed merchant, and maintains the through line in more strenuous movements.'

Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Concerto

'If Driver offers a robust, muscular view of the Beach, he is certainly in touch with his feminine side in the highly attractive single-movement Concerto by Dorothy Howell.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'These wonderful performances have the air of chamber music, of close listening between soloist, band and director...[a] thought-provoking and eminently enjoyable cycle.'

Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'Everything feels ‘in the moment’, a quality of improvisation like music created in the playing of it. Her musicality always comes with an element of surprise...This is concerto-playing of the very highest order.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'This is an excellent recording all round, with the LSO responding superbly well to the many technical and expressive challenges posed in performing Adès's orchestral music.'

Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'The Bavarians’ playing is special…Aimard is as strong an advocate as always [in Le désenchantement du monde], and Murail devotees should not hesitate.'

Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC

'[The Rihm] packs a remarkable series of moods into its 15 minutes…it is sumptuously played, and Rihm gives the soloist space for that, in language that is comfortably aristocratic.'

Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Early Music

'The Orlandos sensibly espouse the music’s rough edges (as in the Kyrie Cuthberte), courting roughness themselves in a good cause.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'Phantasm’s performances are totally convincing and absorbing...their acuity to the music’s ever-active emotional flux leaves them unafraid to use forceful gestures of articulation and dynamics to make a point.'

Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'These are all top-rate singers with pure and excellently focused voices: every one of them appears here as a soloist in one of the duet sections, and the intonation and ensemble are beyond reproach.'

Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC

Instrumental

'As we expect from Perahia, everything sounds natural and inevitable. Ego doesn’t come into it: rather, he acts as a conduit between composer and audience with a purity that few can emulate.'

Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'Her detailing is one of the aspects that makes this performance so compelling, be it the bringing out of a new line in the repeat, subtle changes in phrasing, a touch of pedal – examples are to be found in every single variation.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC

'Trifonov’s is the best kind of virtuoso playing, where one is hardly aware of the notes being played, allowing one to simply bask in the genius of Liszt’s musical narrative and the transcendant execution of an awesomely gifted pianist.'

Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Opera

'This is a finely honed production that follows its premise to an absurdist conclusion with slick theatricality and dispassionate zeal...All sentimentalism is banished here.'

Available Format: DVD Video

'It's beautifully acted and sung. Rice wrings your heart throughout and her self-lacerating final scenes have a harrowing immediacy.'

Available Format: Blu-ray

'It's beautifully acted and sung. Rice wrings your heart throughout and her self-lacerating final scenes have a harrowing immediacy.'

Available Format: DVD Video

'Singing of great authority from a uniformly fine, if unfamiliar cast...It’s a heady, enthralling experience, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.'

Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC

Orchestral

'The orchestral playing is breathtaking in its accuracy -the sort of Haydn playing you dream of…this may well become the period-instrument Haydn cycle by which all others are measured.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'You may be surprised by Thomas Dausgaard’s force and conviction as a Mahlerian. This exceptional issue from the Pacific Northwest ought to be a game-changer for all concerned.'

Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'Vänskä’s Sibelius is all about clarity – of rhythm, of texture, of intention. It is zealously unfussy and entirely without exaggeration. But it can stop you in your tracks.'

Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Recital

'In War & Peace finds DiDonato back on Baroque ground for the first time in a while, and it’s a joyful musical homecoming...Drama, as ever with DiDonato, is everything. Ornamentation serves narrative first, ego second.'

Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'The disc’s principal pleasures lie in the rarities, where we also find Prohaska at her most beguiling...and the orchestral playing has great fluency and charm throughout.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'Fritsch’s Mozart is a sheer delight. This is no bland essay of the usual suspects painted in anonymous colours but a vivid portrait gallery of characters that Fritsch has actually played on stage.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Solo Vocal

'The interpretations are suffused with a gentle intelligence, an instinct for unforced but direct communication and what feels like a real love for the repertoire.'

Available Format: CD

'It’s music that’s very well suited to his voice: grainy and gentle and with that characteristic burnished-mahogany tone...this is supremely seductive Lieder singing.'

Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'This is exceptional Lieder singing, fusing line, text and dynamics into an indivisible whole, all of it delivered with a conversational intimacy that is often breathtaking.'

Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive

Chris grew up in London and studied cello from the age of 5. He never did enough practice to get really good at it, but caught a passion for Classical music which would stick with him forever. He has wide ranging musical tastes, still plays Chamber music and particularly loves Mahler.

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Awards, Gramophone Awards 2017 - the top three in each category

Baroque Instrumental

Baroque Vocal

Chamber

Choral

Concerto

Early Music

Instrumental

Opera

Orchestral

Recital

Solo Vocal

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