Announcement,
Gramophone Artist of the Year 2016 Shortlist
Gramophone yesterday announced the shortlist for their Artist of the Year Award: you can vote now until the end of July, and the result will be announced at the Gramophone Awards Ceremony on 15th September.
Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor/piano)
DiDonato and Pappano effectively cut away anything that’s interpretatively extraneous.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC
View Antonio Pappano's complete available discography here.
Andris Nelsons (conductor)
Powerful and beautifully crafted, this recording – the first from the relationship between DG and the Boston Symphony under Nelsons – is a hugely impressive sign of just what this ensemble/maestro partnership may go on to achieve.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
View Andris Nelsons's complete available discography here.
Jonas Kaufmann (tenor)
Cavalleria Rusticana & I Pagliacci
Jonas Kaufmann, Liudmyla Monastyrska , Maria Agresta, Dimitri Platanias, Ambrogio Maestri Staatskapelle Dresden, Christian Thielemann
We have plenty of the thrilling, untrammelled and ringing sound that the tenor is capable of at his best...Happily, Kaufmann’s outstanding central performances are well matched, both musically and scenically.
Available Format: 2 DVD Videos
View Jonas Kaufmann's complete available discography here.
Daniil Trifonov (piano)
The opening bars tell you this is going to be a good “Pag Rhap”. As things turn out, it is a great one, clearly up there with the very best.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
View Daniil Trifonov's complete available discography here.
Anja Harteros (soprano)
View Anja Harteros's complete available discography here.
Yevgeny Sudbin (piano)
He shares with Horowitz an ability to conjure up landscapes and narratives within these sonatas, so vividly and intensely are they etched.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
View Yevgeny Sudbin's complete available discography here.
Igor Levit (piano)
Levit’s musical personality is as integrated and mature as his technique. And both of these are placed at the service of the music’s glory rather than his own.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
View Igor Levit's complete available discography here.
Janine Jansen (violin)
Brahms & Bartók: Violin Concertos
Janine Jansen, London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Antonio Pappano
Jansen gives us a lyric reading [of the Brahms] of rare inwardness and beauty...it is a performance that marries meditation with motion, such is the suppleness of Jansen’s and Pappano’s feel for the concerto’s larger symphonic movement and the hand-in-glove relationship that exists between soloist, conductor and Pappano’s superbly responsive Santa Cecilia orchestra.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
View Janine Jansen's complete available discography here.
Vilde Frang (violin)
These are urgently communicative, potentially transformative accounts of scores which, if no longer confined to the fringes of the repertoire, have yet to command universal admiration.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
View Vilde Frang's complete available discography here.
Alina Ibragimova (violin)
Ibragimova has made many fine recordings in recent years, but this solo Ysaÿe disc must count as one of her most memorable achievements.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC