A good night at the Gramophones...

A wee bit disorientating to find the Gramophone Awards shifted a) to mid September, b) to LSO St Luke's. But a fine venue it proved, hipper and airier than the good old Dorchester, snazzy in the pink spotlights which illuminated the heat-haze of some 115 candles.

Gone were the sexist comments of yesteryear, ditched in favour of fine words about the power of music to enhance lives and bring people together, and dedications of awards to a variety of parents, teachers and young music-lovers around the world. Gone, too, the all-male line-up of last time: Artist of the Year went to Alison Balsom, Record of the Year to Patricia Kopatchinskaja's disc of Hungarian violin concertos. Guitarist Xuefei Yang was there to perform some Britten songs with Ian Bostridge and Hungarian violinist Katalin Kokas played Bartok duos with her husband, Barnabas Kelemen. Not all good on the sexism front, though, as Decca's little film (they were record of the year) had to be started off by a simpering dollybird of a soprano who is perfectly good, but. No sign of Kaufmann or Calleja having to be anything but their good selves in the later images.

Many much-loved figures among the great and good were present, notably Julian Bream who received the Lifetime Achievement Award and thanked the industry, with sparkles intact, for recognising that he was not a bad guitarist.

It was a particular good night for Bartok, whose Violin Concerto No.2 played by Patricia K was Record of the Year and whose music for violin and piano played by Barnabas Kelemen and Zoltan Kocsis won the Chamber award. Wonderful to see Barnabas pulling in at the top - regular JDCMB readers will know that I've been shouting out about him for quite a while. He is not only a magnificent player technically, but the most thorough and exacting of all-round musicians in that fabulous tradition that Hungary's Franz Liszt Academy has long championed: pure, penetrating, powerful. The Gramophone Awards are a fine way indeed to be put firmly on the map, and with luck megastardom should await. Hear Barnabas, Katalin and their string quartet at the Wigmore on Sunday morning and get his recording here. I am hoping to go and see them in Budapest later in the year.

A fine night, too, for pianists. We had a performance from Benjamin Grosvenor, whose next album is due out in February - exact content still under wraps, but to judge from his glinting, whimsical Albeniz and Shostakovich transcriptions, there'll be some intriguing Golden-Age-style stuff on it. He handed over the Young Artist of the Year title to 18-year-old Jan Lisiecki, who played Bach's Partita No.1 exquisitely. Steven Osborne was Instrumentalist of the Year and treated us to a short extract from his winning disc, Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.

No pics by me this time because my phone was out of juice (as was I) after a lengthy day going to Bristol and back for, er, the BBC Music Magazine Awards jury panel meeting. I've been ploughing through a very, very, very large pile of discs for that. A topic for another time.

UPDATE, 4.15pm: One spotted James Rhodes leaving early. Perhaps this was why: http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/sep/18/james-rhodes-classical-music-needs-an-enema-not-awards?CMP=twt_gu
It didn't help, I might add, that they took 2 hrs to present 6 awards, and no food materialised til 10pm.