Awards,
Gramophone Awards 2017: The Winners!
The category-winners of this year's Gramophone Awards have just been announced: among those scooping an award are Matthias Goerne, Joyce DiDonato, Murray Perahia and Isabelle Faust.
The overall Record of the Year will be announced on 13th September at the Awards Ceremony in London, as will the Lifetime Achievement Award and Artist of the Year.
You can browse through all the winning discs below, and visit our Gramophone Awards special offer page - until 6th November we're offering great discounts on all twelve titles.
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
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
Chamber
"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
Choral
Mozart: 'Great' Mass in C minor and Exsultate, jubilate
Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Bach Collegium Japan Chorus & Orchestra, Masaaki Suzuki
"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
"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
Contemporary
Musica Viva 22: Benjamin, Ligeti and Murail
Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano), Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, George Benjamin
"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
Early Music
"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
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
Opera
Berg: Wozzeck (DVD)
Christian Gerhaher, Gun-Brit Barkmin, Brandon Jovanovich; Opernhaus Zurich, Fabio Luisi, Andreas Homoki (dir.)
"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
Orchestral
"As in the previous volumes, 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
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
Solo vocal
"This is supremely seductive Lieder singing, with a natural intelligence and ease with the words, matched by playing from Christoph Eschenbach that coaxes and caresses the piano with loving delicacy."
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
