Off to the RealLifePoshPlace (as opposed to the JDCMB Cyberposhplace) for a day of celebration and suspense as the Gramophone Awards are announced...oh wait... No suspense, except for Record of the Year. A press release has just plopped into the in-box telling us all the others. Which you'd think kind of defeats the purpose of having the entire UK music business sit in the Dorchester all day...
But
there's some really wonderful news: Benjamin Grosvenor has won both
Young Artist of the Year and Instrumental, in the latter category
pipping to the post no lesser personages than Stephen Hough and Paul
Lewis. That definitely requires something bubbly.
Right now I'm busy putting on a smart dress and a bit o' slap, so I'm going to post the press release. Stand by for the full inside report on the goings-on after the event and follow on Twitter at #GramoAwards. I may tweet now and then if I have any reception on the fruityphone.
GRAMOPHONE AWARDS 2012 - THE “OSCARS OF CLASSICAL MUSIC”
· Benjamin Grosvenor becomes youngest artist to achieve double-Award win
· Joseph Calleja voted ‘Artist of the Year’
· Claudio Abbado honoured with ‘Lifetime Achievement’ Award
· Murray Perahia wins new ‘Piano Award’
· Naïve crowned ‘Label of the Year’
· ‘Recording of the Year’ to be revealed later today
The Gramophone Awards – the
world’s most influential classical music prizes – are announced today
at London’s Dorchester Hotel in a ceremony co-hosted by two of classical
music’s hottest properties: composer and conductor – and professional
model – Eric Whitacre, and Danielle de Niese, described by The New York Times as “opera’s coolest soprano”.
James Jolly, Editor-in-Chief of Gramophone said:
“With
more than 750 new recordings of phenomenal range and quality under
consideration for the 2012 Gramophone Awards, coming up with the
shortlists and winners has been challenging, but extremely enjoyable.
This is an extremely exciting and vibrant time for classical music and
the winners announced today represent the best of the best, where the
best is a very rich feast indeed.”
The Gramophone Awards 2012, now in their 35th year, are presented in association with Steinway & Sons and EFG International.
The most coveted prize, ‘Recording of the Year’, will be revealed during today’s ceremony and announced this afternoon.
Crowning
a magnificent year that saw him become both the youngest soloist to
open the BBC Proms and the youngest pianist ever to be signed by Decca, Benjamin Grosvenor now becomes Gramophone’s youngest double-Award winner. He is named Young Artist of the Year and wins the Best Instrumental category for his debut disc of music by Ravel, Chopin and Liszt on Decca. The 20-year-old from Southend-on-Sea has been highly praised for his poetic expression
and virtuosity, and this double accolade from Gramophone is another
noteworthy badge of honour in his rise to international acclaim.
Joseph Calleja is named Gramophone’s Artist of the Year
in the only Award decided by public vote. It rounds off an incredible
year for the Maltese tenor, described by Gramophone as “a tenor of
uncommon distinction, whose elegance and sense of style are second to
none on the operatic stage today.” From performing at the Last Night of
the Proms to reaching No. 1 in the Danish pop charts Calleja is now
established as a regular at all the leading opera houses in the world,
including the Royal Opera House and New York’s Metropolitan Opera.
Joseph reaches out to a wide public who respond as much to his open and
charming personality as his voice. His latest album ‘Be My Love,’ a
tribute to Mario Lanza, became an instant best-seller.
“His vision has left an imprint on every orchestra in Europe” says fellow conductor Daniel Harding, of this year’s Lifetime Achievement winner, Claudio Abbado.
Abbado conducts the best orchestras, yet devotes much of his time to
nurturing young talent, as founder and music director of the Youth
Orchestra of the European Union and the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra,
as well as artistic director of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and
founder and principal conductor of both the Lucerne Festival Orchestra
and Italy’s Orchestra Mozart. He has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon
since 1967, amassing a discography that includes the entire symphonic
works of Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Schubert and Ravel and
more than 20 complete opera recordings.
A new prize for 2012, The Piano Award, goes to one of today’s most respected musicians, Murray Perahia.
Gramophone has long celebrated Perahia’s exceptional sensibility,
lyricism and naturalness, but in the year that Perahia celebrates 40
years of recording for Sony Classical and its forerunner CBS
Masterworks, Gramophone pays special tribute to this exceptional
pianist. In addition to the Award, Gramophone has produced a digital
magazine that gathers together every Perahia review it has ever published.
Superbly
produced, gorgeously packaged recordings of artistic vision and
integrity from musicians of the highest calibre, symbolises naïve - Gramophone’s 2012 Label of the Year.
Naïve’s artist roster is rich and impressive, from Jordi Savall,
Anne-Sofie von Otter and Marc Minkowski with his Musiciens du Louvre, to
Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Bertrand Chamayou and Francesco Piemontesi. The
label looks set to leave a legacy with its ground-breaking Vivaldi
Edition, one of the most ambitious recording projects ever undertaken.
Now in its twelfth year, the unprecedented Vivaldi Edition captures on
record the entire collection of autograph manuscripts by the composer
preserved in Turin’s Biblioteca Nazionale, making up some 450 works and
unearthing never-before-heard works along the way.
A special Historic Reissue Award honours an extraordinary 1939 live recording of Smetana’s Má vlast by the Czech Philharmonic under Václav Talich.
The extraordinary recording, issued by Supraphon, captures a
spontaneous outburst of the Czech national anthem by the audience,
symbolising the burning presence of Czech patriotism in a
German-occupied Prague.
Winners were also announced across the 15 album categories (see below).
Gramophone has been producing a series of podcasts supporting the Awards at www.gramophone.co.uk and during the month of August, nearly 50,000 were downloaded. Gramophone
has also formed retail partnerships with Amazon, i-Tunes and many of
the UK’s specialist retailers. iTunes is offering a free sampler
featuring Award-winning recordings at www.itunes.com/gramawards.
Gramophone’s Awards issue is published on Friday 28 September with full information about the Awards and winners.
Twitter: #GramoAwards
CATEGORY AWARDS
Baroque Instrumental
Bach: Orchestral Suites. Freiburg Baroque Orchestra / Petra Mullejans; Gottfried von der Goltz [Harmonia Mundi]
The
Baroque Instrumental category acknowledges the remarkable level of
musicianship that has built on decades of scholarship to create one of
the most dynamic areas of the current music scene. The Freiburg Baroque
Orchestra is one of the most thrilling ensembles around today, and wins a
Gramophone Award for the second year in a row. Gramophone says: “It’s
hard to imagine an eminent Baroque ensemble more temperamentally suited
to the esprit of Bach’s four orchestral essays than the Freiburgers.”
Baroque Vocal
Schütz: Musicalische Exequien. Vox Luminis / Lionel Meunier
[Ricercar / RSK]
Along
with its Instrumental sister category, Baroque Vocal is one of the most
dynamic areas of music-making today and this winner is impeccably
performed, recorded and presented. Lionel Meunier and Vox Luminis’s
release of Schütz’s Musicalische Exequien “embodies everything a
Recording of the Year should be,” according to Gramophone. Schütz’s
Baroque masterpiece, which inspired Brahms for his German Requiem, is performed by a vocal ensemble “over-endowed with impressive individual turns.”
Chamber
Schumann: Complete Works for Piano Trio. Christian Tetzlaff (vn); Tanja Tetzlaff (vc);
Leif Ove Andsnes (pf)
[EMI]
Making
music with friends is one of the most rewarding pursuits anyone –
amateur or professional – can do, and this category allows music lovers
to glimpse musicians – most decidedly professional and at the top of
their game – getting together and performing in intimate surroundings.
Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes – no stranger to the Gramophone
Awards – teams up with his regular musical partners Christian and Tanja
Tetzlaff in Schumann's music for piano to create what Gramophone
describes as “a remarkable achievement.”
Choral
Howells : Requiem. St Paul's Magnificat and Nunc dimittis. Choir of Trinity College,
Cambridge / Stephen Layton
[Hyperion]
Stephen
Layton – nominated twice in this category this year – is one of the few
choirmasters to work both within the Oxbridge choir tradition (as music
director at Trinity College, Cambridge) and outside it (as the director
of Polyphony and a much-sought-after guest by many top-league choirs).
With his Cambridge choir, he here celebrates one of English music's most
appealing composers, Herbert Howells, in a recording described by
Gramophone as “a perfect disc of its kind.”
Concerto
Beethoven, Berg: Violin Concertos. Isabelle Faust (vn); Orchestra Mozart/ Claudio Abbado [Harmonia Mundi]
Isabelle
Faust, a former Gramophone Young Artist of the Year, returns to the
Awards in some very distinguished company, Orchestra Mozart and Claudio
Abbado. Here Beethoven is intriguingly coupled with Berg in concerto
performances described by Gramophone as “models
of artistic and human discipline, meticulously probing Berg’s and
Beethoven’s intentions but conveying also a sense that such peaks of
human achievement are something you assume from within, not take by
force from without.”
Contemporary
Rautavaara: Percussion Concerto. Cello Concerto No. 2. Modificata Colin Currie (perc); Truls
Mørk (vc); Helsinki PO / John Storgårds
[Ondine / Select]
Rautavaara’s
magnificent, highly contrasting percussion and cello concertos make for
a sensational release. Performed with “coruscating virtuosity” by
percussionist Colin Currie and with cellist Truls Mørk “caressing out
the subtleties” in the cello concerto, Ondine vividly sets the seal on
this superb Contemporary Award-winner. The soloists are supported by
John Storgårds – going from strength to strength on the podium – and the
excellent Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.
DVD Documentary
‘Music Makes A City.’ A film by Owsley Brown III & Jerome Hiler
[Harmonia Mundi]
'Music
makes a City', a film made by Owsley Brown III and Jerome Hiler, tells
the scarcely believable, but inspiring, story of the Louisville
Orchestra from Kentucky and its belief that new music was the answer to
creating wealth and power for the city following the Great Depression
and crippling floods there in 1937. The list of composers who were
commissioned by the Orchestra reads like a roll-call of 20th-century
greats and the film includes interviews with the senior generation of
American musicians, from the centenarian Elliott Carter to the
near-nonagenarian Ned Rorem. A compelling and beautiful documentary.
DVD Performance
Bruckner: Symphony No. 5. Lucerne Festival Orchestra / Claudio Abbado
[Accentus / Select]
Honouring
great musical performance on film, the winning performance “takes a
special, even unique, band of musicians and friends who (we can see)
love what they do, making chamber music on the grandest scale.” Claudio
Abbado revitalised the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 2003, bringing back
to life an ensemble that had first performed in 1938 under Toscanini's
baton. Though a part-time group, the orchestra is comprised of some of
the finest musicians in Europe, many of them soloists, gathered around a
'core' of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. They are now one of the world's
finest orchestras and performances of Bruckner don't get much more
compelling than this.
Early Music
Victoria: Sacred Works. Ensemble Plus Ultra / Michael Noone
[Archiv / DG]
The
Early Music category has become a showcase of the glorious polyphonic
choral music written before 1600, which has become increasingly popular
in recent decades. Tomás Luis de Victoria was celebrated in 2011, the
400th anniversary of his birth, and this 10-disc set of around 90 works
emerged as a truly stunning tribute to this Renaissance Spanish master.
“It is just deeply human and
emotional music that [Ensemble Plus Ultra and Michael Noone] perform
not only with great tenderness but so simply that one is struck every
time – as if for the first time – by its crystalline, uncomplicated beauty.”
Historic
Chopin: Etudes. Maurizio Pollini
[Testament]
The
Historic category, reserved for recordings making their first
appearance as a commercial release, has put the spotlight on
extraordinary treasures and this previously unissued recording of
Chopin’s Etudes by Maurizio Pollini is no exception. It was made shortly
after the teenage Pollini won the International Chopin Piano
Competition in 1960, but became the first in a long line of recordings
not to be sanctioned by the notoriously highly strung pianist. As the
pianist turned 70 his early thoughts on these works was warmly welcomed
by Gramophone, which said: “It is surely
astonishing that Pollini could reject his early superfine brilliance,
his aristocratic musicianship, his patrician ideal in the Chopin
Etudes.”
Instrumental
Chopin, Liszt, Ravel: Piano Works. Benjamin Grosvenor (pf)
[Decca]
Gramophone’s
Young Artist of the Year also scoops the Award for Best Instrumental
with his album of Chopin, Liszt and Ravel. Full of “coltish exuberance”
and a “subtle brand of bravura,” according to reviewer Rob Cowan,
Grosvenor’s virtuosity and dexterity are clear, but it is in Liszt’s En rêve
that his artistry paints the most beautifully subtle canvas.
Grosvenor’s debut disc on Decca topped the specialist classical charts
for several weeks.
Opera
Beethoven: Fidelio. Stemme; Kaufmann; Lucerne Festival Orchestra / Claudio Abbado
[Decca]
Claudio Abbado's Fidelio,
caught live with his superb Lucerne Festival Orchestra in the pit in
2010, also finds two of today's finest dramatic singers in the central
roles: Nina Stemme, today's leading Isolde, and Jonas Kaufmann, today's
most accomplished dramatic tenor. Gramophone says: “If Fidelio
speaks as no other opera does of the miraculous resilience of the human
spirit, Claudio Abbado’s late re-creation of it serves only to compound
that miracle.”
Orchestral
Martinů: Symphonies Nos 1-6. BBC Symphony Orchestra / Jiři Bělohlávek
[ONYX / Select]
In
what is traditionally one of the most hotly contested categories and
sparring ground of today's major conductors and orchestras, Jiři
Bělohlávek triumphs with this superb set of the Martinů symphonies
recorded live at the Barbican in 2009/10 with the BBC Symphony
Orchestra. Gramophone critic Mike Ashman firmly dismisses talk of “the
grace and elegance of Bělohlávek’s conducting” in these colourfully
scored wartime works – though that is clearly there – and highlights
“the pain and stress” they often depict which is “superbly realised
here”.
Recital
Arias for Guadagni. Iestyn Davies (countertenor); Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen
[Hyperion]
A
superb collection of 18th-century arias written for the castrato
Gaetano Guadagni from leading British countertenor Iestyn Davies.
Reputedly a “wild and careless singer” when he first came to London,
Guadagni’s untapped potential was soon identified and nurtured by
Handel, who went on to write some of his finest arias for him. He was so
famous that Horace Walpole named a racehorse after him and he was
Gluck’s first Orfeo, but it has taken surprisingly long for someone to
produce an intelligently chosen and stylishly performed recital
exploring his career and Iestyn Davies has done just that.
Solo Vocal
Songs of War. Simon Keenlyside (bar); Malcolm Martineau (pf)
[Sony Classical]
Reactions
to this disc’s concept and programme – as well as the sepia soldier on
the cover – can be predicted: Simon Keenlyside is more often nominated
for the Awards for opera productions, but here he debuts in the Solo
Vocal category – a cleverly compiled collection of war songs
(predominantly British with a few American additions). “A peak
achievement for both, Malcolm Martineau plays superbly and Keenlyside
brings a huge dramatic range to these powerful songs by Butterworth,
Finzi, Ireland, Vaughan Williams, Kurt Weill and others by pointing out
that war celebrates life as well as confronting death.”
The
annual Gramophone Awards, the world’s most influential classical music
prizes, given this year in association with Steinway & sons and EFG
International, were launched in 1977 by Gramophone magazine (founded in 1923 by Sir Compton Mackenzie). Available internationally, Gramophone publishes bespoke editions of the magazine for the United States of America, Russia and Brazil. The Gramophone Player, available at gramophone.co.uk,
will feature excerpts from all of this year’s prize-winning albums. The
media player - the first from a classical music magazine - features
full-length recordings, podcasts, an extensive editor’s choice section
and a selection of new recordings each month. Subscribers are free to
stream as much music as they wish.
Gramophone has been producing a series of podcasts supporting the Awards at www.gramophone.co.uk and during the month of August nearly 50,000 were downloaded.
Gramophone
has also formed retail partnerships with Amazon, iTunes and many of the
UK’s specialist retailers. iTunes is offering a free sampler featuring
Award-winning recordings at www.itunes.com/gramawards.
Gramophone’s Awards issue is published on Friday 28 September with full information about the Awards and Award winners.
Twitter: #GramoAwards
