14th September 2020

Awards, Gramophone Awards 2020 - the top three in each category

by Katherine Cooper

Gramophone Awards 2020 Shortlist The three finalists in each of the ten categories for the 2020 Gramophone Awards were announced on Friday, with winners to be revealed on 22nd September; though there will be no live event this year, an online ceremony will be live-streamed on Medici TV on the evening of October 6th, when details of special prizes including Artist and Recording of the Year will also be unveiled...

Chamber

'What makes this CD unmissable is the Veress Trio, a masterpiece and a performance to match.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'The freshness and spontaneity of these interpretations is unfaltering, as is the instantaneous rapport and subtle, crystal-clear tonal beauty of the pair’s playing.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'They allow every passionate detail to come across yet preserve a sense of nobility and innate grace that I always associate with Dohnányi.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Choral

'This new Samson now becomes the top recommendation: for its uniformly excellent soloists, its excitingly ‘present’ choral singing and, above all, its more urgent sense of theatre.'

Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'One never doubts Bach or Suzuki’s belief in its importance for mankind. The musicians convey it with infectious zeal...Generic early music politesse is relegated to the shadows.'

Available Formats: 2 SACDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'One can imagine the virtuosity required by every contributor, at every turn, to make this a reality, let alone a dazzling triumph.'

Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Concerto

'Stand[s] high and proud for its artistry, poetry, stylish musicianship and, perhaps above all, rapport between soloist and conductor. This really does feel like a meeting of minds.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'He has already lived with these works for long enough to strike a balance between thoughtfulness and youthful spontaneity…Chan and the RSNO offer solid support.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'This series of discs is shaping up to be a serious front-runner in a cycle of works that has never wanted for fine recordings.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Contemporary

'For proof that Adès does what he does with mind-boggling brilliance, look no further.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'These compositions show increasing refinement of style and sharpening of dramatic atmosphere.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'The performers sound at one in their presentation...The whole is more than the sum of its fragments, compelling and involving.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC

Early Music

'The fleeting nature of Gesualdo’s flurried passages is a particular speciality of Les Arts Florissants.'

Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'Rich and vibrant in texture, [the Stabat mater] draws on this ensemble’s deep palette of vocal colours.'

Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'Sparked by careful research and fruitful obsessions, the performances are deliciously atmospheric. The matchmaking process itself is fascinating.'

Available Formats: CD + Book, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Instrumental

'Above all there’s that sense of being completely at one with Beethoven himself. And that, in the end, is what makes this such a magnificent achievement.'

Available Formats: 9 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'Blend imaginative yet learned interpretation, profound sensitivity and poetry, and personal charisma, and you have here one of the finest accounts of Brahms’s late piano works on record.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'No pianist in my experience has matched Osborne’s finale [in No. 8] for acuity of touch, pinpoint transparency and airborne suppleness.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC

Opera

'Warner’s handsome and perceptive staging of Barber’s Vanessa has probably done more to silence the work’s naysayers than any in recent memory.'

Available Format: DVD Video

Picture format: 16:9

Sound format: LPCM Stereo / 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio

Available Format: Blu-ray

'It’s little short of a revelation, in which some century and a half of performance tradition is scraped away...Rousset underpins it all with conducting that is fleet and dramatically engaged.'

Available Formats: 3 CDs + Book, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'With DiDonato nonpareil in the title-role and a uniformly strong cast, this now becomes a first choice for Handel’s Venetian masterpiece.'

Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Orchestral

'Roth seems to have an emotional hotline to Berlioz, alive to every twist and turn of the composer’s fevered passions.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'The Czech Philharmonic give their collective all; with the best sound Decca has yet achieved at the Rudolfinum, this can be placed next to Charles Mackerras as the finest modern Asrael.'

Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'It takes a performance of fierce concentration and absolute dedication to ensure this music’s hold on an audience...this has to be one of the most important symphonic releases of the year.'

Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Recital

'She brings her stage experience to bear in dramatic readings whose intelligent responses to the differing nuances of these three pieces are what really make the project spark.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'With her silvery tone, immaculate sense of line and telling if understated way with words, Piau is very much at home in this repertory.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'He’s no convincing bad boy...but this supple and sweet-toned instrument has plenty to bring elsewhere...Il Pomo d’Oro offer all their usual technicolour support and showmanship.'

Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC

Solo Vocal

'Not only does Spence’s voice offer a rare mix of steely strength and velvety tenderness but his bright, vibrant timbre communicates a touching, wide-eyed sense of ardent longing, tinged with melancholy.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'Noble, refined, heartfelt, supremely moving and often beautiful in the extreme…totally sincerity backed up by superb vocalism, matched at every turn by Drake.'

Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

'[Gerhaher] recaptures the wonderful feeling of studied spontaneity that made the first volume of the series so special…Certainly a top choice for this wonderful cycle.'

Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC

Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial

Katherine Cooper read English at University College, Oxford, and joined Presto in 2009. She began her musical life as a violinist, but now spends much of her time singing Rossini and Elgar (sometimes even for money). She is also an Associate Lecturer for the Open University, specialising in music and literature.

All Classical special offers

Awards, Gramophone Awards 2020 - the top three in each category

Chamber

Choral

Concerto

Contemporary

Early Music

Instrumental

Opera

Orchestral

Recital

Solo Vocal

Download queue