Having announced the individual recording category award winners some weeks ago, in a departure from tradition (or rather, a return to an old tradition, sort of), the leading classical music awards have been announced. The rest of them.
Few will quibble with the winner of the Lifetime Achievement prize. Presented by young guitar virtuoso Miloš Karadaglić, the gong went to 80-year-old fellow guitarist Julian Bream. He had won in the DVD category some years ago for an Avie film about his life (well worth seeing for an amusing encounter with Stravinsky alone), and he returned to accept an award that recognized the transformative influence his career has had on the way the guitar is perceived. And another fine guitarist was even drafted in to play at the London ceremony, Xuefei Yang, who performed Britten with the tenor Ian Bostridge.
Artist of the Year was trumpeter Alison Balsom. Her recent (ingenious and wonderful) cross-genre show, Gabriel, at Shakespeare's Globe was hailed as a great success by the London crits, and this crowns the revival of a career that a few years ago seemed to have slackened a little from its early promise.
Young Artist went to the teenage Polish-Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki. Newly signed to Deutsche Grammophon, his debut album featured Mozart, while his next is the music of Chopin. Label of the Year went to another Universal Music label, Decca Classics, who have seen a remarkable flowering of their artists in the last year or two, among them the pianist Benjamin Grosvenor and violinist Leonidas Kavakos. The Special Achievement award was gifted to Alain Lanceron, the long-time guiding artists-and-repertoire force behind Virgin Classics.
Recording of the Year--the highest honor the magazine bestows--went to the winner of the concerto recording category, the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Ensemble Modern under Peter Eötvös, playing concertos by Bartók, Eötvös and Ligeti, on the Naïve label.
The winning recordings have been made available on iTunes in their "Mastered for iTunes" series. Which, lots of technical info aside, is better than usual download quality. The awards were sponsored (always good to give the money a mention!) by EFG International and Steinway & Sons.
