Thursday (10/6) on the NPR blog Deceptive Cadence, Anastasia Tsioulcas writes, “The Gramophone Awards are a huge deal within classical music. (I feel confident in that assertion even while mentioning that I was the magazine’s North America editor for several years during the past decade.) After all, we here in the U.S. don’t have any American honors of equal prominence that are dedicated exclusively to classical music—and it’s fair to say that as prestigious as winning a Grammy Award is, the classical categories don’t exactly hold the television spotlight. They don’t even rate a place on the Grammy broadcast! So these prizes, announced today for 2011 in London, have a special pride of place. Most of the awards are chosen by a panel of critics. One honor is decided by enthusiastic fans voting online: the Artist of the Year Award. This year’s winner is Los Angeles Philharmonic Music Director Gustavo Dudamel. … This is the first year in which the Label of the Year Award has been given to an enterprise that specializes in live recordings. Keeping things local, it’s London’s own Wigmore Hall label.” A complete list of the winners is available at the link above.
Posted October 7, 2011
