BBC Music Magazine Awards 2016
The winners of the 11th annual BBC Music Magazine Awards, the only classical music awards in which the main categories are voted for by the public, have now been announced at a ceremony at Kings Place, London, hosted by BBC Music Magazine Editor Oliver Condy and BBC Radio 4’s James Naughtie. Conductor Antonio Pappano wins the BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Year Award with Verdi’s Aida, released on Warner Classics. Just when the days of large-scale opera studio recordings were believed to be a thing of the past, Pappano, his soloists and the Orchestra and Chorus of Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia headed into the studio for one of Verdi’s longest and most lavish works. Huge in scale, it was undoubtedly one of the most ambitious recording projects of recent years, but one that proved a major triumph. Antonio Pappano told BBC Music Magazine, it was a case of ‘Right place, right time, right singers, right conductor, right orchestra and chorus, right hall’. In the other awards voted for by the public, conductor Sakari Oramo and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra won the Orchestral Award for their thrilling recording of Nielsen’s Symphonies Nos 1 & 3, a fitting tribute to the Danish composer whose 150th anniversary was celebrated in 2015. Tenebrae took the laurels in the Choral Award with its disc of Bruckner and Brahms motets, bringing the British choir an unprecedented third success overall since the BBC Music Magazine Awards began ten years ago. In the Concerto category, British violinist Rachel Podger picked up her second BBC Music Magazine Award for her wonderfully vivacious recording of Vivaldi’s L’Estro armonico collection of concertos, while David Watkin’s Instrumental Award for his disc of JS Bach’s Cello Suites has a certain poignancy to it – the Scottish cellist has since had to give up playing the instrument due to illness. This year’s Vocal and Chamber awards had a European flavour to them. In the Vocal category, French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky wowed the jury and readers alike with his inventively programmed disc of music based on the poems of Paul Verlaine, and the Pavel Haas Quartet from the Czech Republic enjoyed success in the Chamber Award, with their recording of Smetana’s String Quartets Nos 1 & 2. This was a second visit to the BBC Music Magazine Awards for the Pavel Haas Quartet, who won the Newcomer of the Year award back in 2007. Three further awards were voted for by the Jury alone. The DVD Award went to Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, a startling and stunning production directed by Olivier Py and stylishly filmed at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Elysées; Germany’s Schumann Quartet won the Newcomer Award for their immaculately performed disc of Mozart, Verdi and Ives; and, finally, composer Sir James MacMillan picked up the Premiere Award, thanks to Nicholas Daniel’s exceptional performance of his Oboe Concerto. You can jump to a particular category using the following links:
"The BBC Music Magazine Awards offer the serious and merited celebration of sustained excellence in music-making... the public votes are cast not for superficial glamour but for real and enduring quality". Harry Eyres, Financial Times PLEASE CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO VIEW MORE INFORMATION ON EACH TITLE |
Opera Category including DISC OF THE YEAR
Chamber Category
Vocal Category
Other Categories