The Gramophone Classical Music Awards honor Simon Rattle for the second time. Raphael Pichon’s film “Bach” wins the Grand Prix | classical music

The 2025 Gramophone Classical Music Awards were announced last night at a ceremony in central London, with Sir Simon Rattle making history as the first musician ever to win Artist of the Year for a second time, having first claimed the title in 1993.

The award recognizes Rattle’s recent work with the London Symphony Orchestra (where he is honorary conductor), the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Age of Enlightenment Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and a series of acclaimed recordings spanning the Baroque to contemporary repertoire. In his video acceptance speech, the conductor said: “I was 10 years old when I started spending my pocket money on Gramophone magazine… This is an extraordinary honour.” The videos included tributes to Rattle from fellow musicians Barbara Hannigan, Peter Hoare, Thomas Quasthoff, and composer John Adams, who said: “How someone could be one of the great conductors of our time and also just an ordinary great guy, a good guy who cared so deeply… I worked with him, and I heard him play my music with the intensity and passion he gave it – it was one of “The greatest joy of my life.”

“You are an inspiration to me and to so many musicians and audiences with your boundless curiosity, kindness, and energy you bring to everything you do,” Hannigan said.

Widely considered the highest honor in the classical recording world, these awards – presented with Presto Music – recognize exceptional recordings and honor artists, bands and record labels. Recording of the Year was awarded to French conductor Raphael Pichon and his choir and Pygmalion Orchestra of period instruments for their recording of JS Bach’s Mass in B Minor on the Harmonia Mundi label. Gramophone praised the performance as “shining on a cellular level, radiating outward with devotional warmth; in short, alive.”

Rising star Maria Dueñas, 22, was named Young Artist of the Year. The Spanish violinist, who won first prize in the 2021 Menuhin Competition and has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, won the instrumental category for her album 24 Caprices by Paganini.

Two recordings from the world premiere won awards. The first – not surprisingly – was in the Contemporary category, where the award went to Sir George Benjamin’s 2023 live recording of his opera Picture a Day Like This, with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The second, remarkably, was for music dating back at least 600 years, but that only saw the light of day last year.

Krasinski’s Manuscript: Fifteenth-Century Music from Krakow was awarded this year’s Early Music Recording Prize. The extraordinary recording is music from a manuscript dating from the mid-1520s that narrowly escaped destruction in 1944 when the library of Polish nobleman Wincenty Krasinski fell victim to Nazi fire. This particular manuscript, the Krasinski manuscript, was one of the only documents ever rescued from the fire, possibly by a musicologist working for the Third Reich who recognized its importance and stole it, saving it from oblivion.

The manuscript was returned to Poland in 1948 and the music collected and now recorded for the first time – more than 40 pieces, most of them polyphonic – is a testament to the rich musical landscape of the late Middle Ages, and provides a unique picture of the European musical culture of the time.

Baritone Sir Thomas Allen received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Gerald Finley (himself a winner in the opera category for his recording with Lise Davidsen, of Wagner’s Flying Dutchman). The famous British singer, who was born in County Durham in 1944, made his debut at Covent Garden in 1971 and, over the past five decades, has performed in opera houses around the world in repertoire ranging from Mozart to Britten and Strauss to Sondheim. He last appeared on stage last summer in Glyndebourne’s The Merry Widow.

In personally accepting the award, Allen paid tribute to the many legendary singers he worked with throughout his long career on stage: “I feel like a very small shrimp in a sea of ​​greatness.” He ended his acceptance speech with moving and heartfelt words of thanks to his longtime agent, Sue Spence, and his wife, Jenny.

Full details of the winners and their recordings are on the Gramophone website.