Awards,
Gramophone Awards 2014: Full details of all the Winners
The Presto website team are currently over at St John's Smith Square for the annual Gramophone Awards, where this year's special awards and of course the coveted Disc of the Year prize have just been announced…
Category-winners (which were revealed on 27th August) are also listed below; you can browse through the complete shortlist here.
Disc of the Year
'The coveted Disc of the Year prize has been awarded to Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig for their Brahms Symphonies cycle on Decca.'
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Artist of the Year
The Artist of the Year crown went to Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos, whose Brahms sonatas with Yuja Wang was a Gramophone Editor's Choice earlier this summer.
Browse the full list of his currently available recordings here.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Sir James Galway, former principal flute of the Berlin Philharmonic and a tireless ambassador for his instrument for five decades, scooped this year's Lifetime Achievement Award, and celebrated with a live performance! Browse the full list of his currently available recordings here.
Outstanding Achievement Award
Sir Neville, who celebrated his 90th birthday in April with a concert at the Royal Festival Hall, was presented with an Outstanding Achievement Award by Alfred Brendel.
Browse the full list of his currently available recordings here.
Label of the Year
The laurels here went to the young Edinburgh-based label Delphian Records, established in 2000 by Paul Baxter and Kevin Findlan and particularly acclaimed for their recordings of baroque and Scottish music.
Category winners
Baroque Instrumental
'The elusive fusion of thematic intricacy, ‘Baroque’ rhetoric and ‘proto-Classical’ Sturm und Drang offered by the instrument are caught perfectly by Esfahani’s supple touch and disarming sense of rhetorical pacing.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Baroque Vocal
'Rademann and his Berlin forces make the strongest possible case for it, with fresh, athletic choral singing, playing of crackling, fizzing energy and excellent solo work...This is the finest recording of CPE’s choral masterpiece I have heard.'
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Chamber
'They represent the best qualities of the Czech tradition – warmth, sonorousness, individuality, intensity; but what’s striking here is their fearless risk-taking, their fervency and the absolute confidence with which they propel you through these two masterpieces.'
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Choral
Contemporary
George Benjamin: Written on Skin
Barbara Hannigan, Bejun Mehta, Christopher Purves, Royal Opera House, George Benjamin
'Filming and sound are both excellent...Benjamin’s score ranges from passages of exquisite iridescence...to climaxes that explode with an orchestral violence new to his work...The cast is excellent, especially Barbara Hannigan as the wife, combining vocal trapeze-work with a thoroughly modern dramatic intensity.'
Available Format: DVD Video
Concerto
'Bavouzet displays a light touch and laudable levels of physical stamina, with a firm grasp of the very different personalities of each piece. Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic perform like soulmates for the duration.'
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Early Music
'Time and again as I listened, my jaw dropped at both the quality of Marenzio's cleverly varied five-voice music and the astonishing sonorities of La Compagnia del Madrigale's beguiling performances.'
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Instrumental
'You will rarely if ever hear Mompou's introspection caught and held with greater affection and finesse...his playing is of an unfaltering poise and translucency. Sony's sound is ideal. This is a disc in a million.'
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Opera
Orchestral
'Back in 1988, Chailly’s Brahms was seen as being not especially Italianate. If it wasn’t then, it is more so now...swift tempi, buoyant phrasing and forward winds are married to strongly drawn lines which move the music unerringly towards its appointed goal.'
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Recital
Solo vocal
'His combination of vocal beauty and verbal sensitivity (his diction always a model), and the fastidiously textured and coloured playing of Helmut Deutsch, make this new recording an important addition to the vast Winterreise discography.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
