Gramophone Awards 2026 - The Winners!

I've just returned from the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms in London for the annual Gramophone Awards ceremony (presented in partnership with Presto Music), where this year's category-winners, special awards and of course the coveted Recording of the Year prize have just been announced...

Until 11th November, we're offering discounts of up to 25% on the category finalists - and will be bringing exclusive interviews with one or two of the winners over the next week...

Celebrate the music of the Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2026 with a free hi-res download sampler from Presto Music, featuring a full track from this year’s winning recordings. Follow this link to claim your copy.

Recording of the Year (and Instrumental Award Winner)

Chamber

Choral

Concerto

Contemporary

Early Music

Opera

Orchestral

Piano

Song

Voice & Ensemble

Artist of the Year - Isabelle Faust

Faust’s success in the Concerto category this year represents her fourth Gramophone Awards victory: back in 1997, she was crowned Young Artist of the Year for her debut solo recording of Bartók Sonatas on Harmonia Mundi, going on to scoop the Chamber Award for her Beethoven sonatas with Alexander Melnikov fifteen years later, and scoring a double-hit in 2017 when her Mozart concertos with Il Giardino Armonico won both the category prize and Recording of the Year. In addition to the award-winning Ligeti, recent recordings have included the final instalment of her Mozart sonatas series with Melnikov, which was praised in Gramophone for ‘the instinctive ease with which the players slip from protagonist to accompanist, and back again’.

Young Artist of the Year - Alexander Malofeev

Born in Moscow in 2001, Malofeev relocated to Berlin in 2022, and his debut solo album Forgotten Melodies (released on Sony in February) centres on Russian composers who also spent significant parts of their careers far from their homeland: Glazunov, Glinka, Rachmaninoff and Medtner, who relocated to Paris, Berlin, Beverly Hills and London respectively. The 2-CD set was BBC Music Magazine’s Recording of the Month in May, and won one of the Young Talent prizes at the Opus Klassik Awards (to be celebrated in Berlin this coming weekend). Malofeev made a cameo appearance on the recent Paganini album by last year’s Gramophone Young Artist María Dueñas, joining her for Gabriela Ortiz’s De cuerda y madera.

Lifetime Achievement - Dame Imogen Cooper

Made a Dame in the 2021 Birthday Honours List, the British pianist (b.1949) announced at the beginning of the year that she was planning to retire after completing a thirteen-month farewell tour around Europe – her last public performance is scheduled to take place at Wigmore Hall next February, when she will perform Schubert’s Winterreise with baritone Henk Neven. For her final recording (released on Chandos in February), Cooper chose the last three Beethoven sonatas, reflecting that ‘I found that the joys and riches of these wonderful works presented themselves with much more vivid colours than had I tussled with them whilst I was tussling with myself’.

Label of the Year - Erato

Named after the Greek muse of lyric poetry and founded in 1953, the Paris-based label places a strong emphasis on French artists and repertoire, with recent successes including Jean Rondeau's award-winning set of the complete works of Louis Couperin, recital albums from Elsa Dreisig, Jakub Józef Orliński and Alexandre Tharaud, and box-sets devoted to Marie-Claire Alain (one of the label's early flagship artists), David Munrow and Maria Tipo.

Upcoming highlights include Felix Mendelssohn's complete Songs Without Words from award-winner Bertrand Chamayou, an eclectic, mermaid-inspired programme from Brazilian sopranist Bruno de Sá, and Danny Elfman's Cello Concerto from Gautier Capuçon.

Orchestra of the Year - Bamberger Symphoniker

Currently directed by Czech conductor Jakub Hrůša (who has been at the helm since 2016), the German orchestra’s stand-out release of the year is a superb set of the complete Martinů symphonies on Deutsche Grammophon which has been praised for the ‘consistently luminous and assured’ playing (Gramophone), ‘assured drive’ (BBC Music Magazine), and Hrůša’s sense of ‘astute theatricality’. A radiant pair of Mozart concertos with Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki and Honorary Conductor Manfred Honeck was an Editor’s Choice in the July edition of Gramophone, and an album centring on Viktor Ullmann’s Piano Concerto (with soloist Jan Bartoš) is due for release on Supraphon this Friday…