2011 Gramophone Awards success

After a remarkably successful season which has seen the world premiere of his extraordinary ‘Concerto for Violin and Orchestra’ for Christian Tetzlaff and the Boston Symphony, followed by the antiphonal ‘In Broken Images’ commissioned by the renowned Italian music festival MiTo to commemorate the unification of Italy, Harrison Birtwistle has won this year’s Gramophone Contemporary Award with NMC’s fine recording of three of his major compositions ‘The Shadow of Night’, ‘Night’s Black Bird and ‘The Cry of Anubis’. The Halle Orchestra is brilliantly conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth with Owen Slade as soloist.

David Parry’s series of for Opera Rara is legendary and numbers more than 30 complete operas, recitals and anthologies devoted to rarely performed masterpieces from the nineteenth century bel-canto tradition. This year’s Opera Award goes to ‘Ermione’ in which Parry conducts the LPO with customary panache, demonstrating his top-class Rossinian credentials. An all-star cast is led by the fabulous Carmen Giannattasio.

Hear Harrison Birtwistle’s speech as he collects the Gramophone Award