Awards,
Books of the Year - Winners 2022
We are very pleased to announce the winning book publications for the annual Presto Music Awards! With so many high-quality tomes to choose from, it was extremely hard to narrow it down to just five selections. However, common to all five winners is an engagingly-written style combined with authoritatively-researched content that is both entertaining to read and highly informative about the person or topic in question.
Find out our chosen book publications for the Presto Music Awards 2022 below.
Winning Book Publications
Drawing upon both recent scholarship and newly-accessible scores and correspondence, this book interweaves an exploration of Vaughan Williams's life - including new insights about his early career, military service in the Great War, and relationships with the women he loved and married - with chapters surveying his enormous body of music, spanning hymn tunes to operas, keyboard etudes to solo concerti, wind band music for amateurs to perhaps the finest symphonic cycle of the twentieth century.
Available Format: Book
Awarded the Legion d'Honneur by the French government in 2006 for his services to French culture, acclaimed writer and broadcaster Roger Nichols invites the reader to accompany him on his journey through the turbulent and fertile period in French music from Berlioz to Boulez. In compiling his collection of articles, interviews, radio plays and talks, Nichols begins with Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and ends with his obituary of Pierre Boulez.
Available Format: Book
From Reykjavik to Rovaniemi, this book examines Nordic music's performers, the attitude of its audiences, and the sound of its composers past and present, celebrating some of the most remarkable music ever written along the way. Drawing on a range of genres and firsthand encounters, it reveals that our fascination with Nordic societies and our love for Nordic music might be more intertwined than first thought.
Available Format: Book
There are few compositions with such an engaging and convoluted story as Janáček’s Jenůfa. This book provides a great deal of new information which has come to light as a result of the research for the critical edition of the score, taking the reader back to the origins of the work as well as discussing the most important productions which were given during Janáček’s lifetime. It includes a large number of documents and photographs, many of which are published here for the first time.
Available Format: Book
Ellena Taylor - Sheet Music and Books Manager
