The results are in. I, for one, am thrilled beyond words that Lorraine Hunt Lieberson won Best Classical Vocal Performance. All the winners in classical categories are listed below. Reactions? Favorites? Disappointments? Share your comments.
Best Engineered Album, Classical
• Elgar: Enigma Variations; Britten: The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, Four Sea Interludes, Michael Bishop, engineer (Paavo Järvi & Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra)
Producer of The Year, Classical• Elaine Martone
Best Classical Album• Mahler: Symphony No. 7, Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; Andreas Neubronner, producer (San Francisco Symphony)
Best Orchestral Performance•
• “Mahler: Symphony No. 7,” Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor (San Francisco Symphony)
Best Opera Recording
• “Golijov: Ainadamar: Fountain Of Tears,” Robert Spano, conductor; Kelley O’Connor & Dawn Upshaw; Valérie Gross & Sid McLauchlan, producers (Women Of The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus; Atlanta Symphony Orchestra)
Best Choral Performance
• “Pärt: Da Pacem,” Paul Hillier, conductor (Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir)
Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with Orchestra)• “Messiaen: Oiseaux Exotiques (Exotic Birds),” John McLaughlin Williams, conductor; Angelin Chang (Cleveland Chamber Symphony)
Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without Orchestra)
• “Chopin: Nocturnes,” Maurizio Pollini
Best Chamber Music Performance• Intimate Voices, Emerson String Quartet
Best Small Ensemble Performance• “Padilla: Sun of Justice,” Peter Rutenberg, conductor; Los Angeles Chamber Singers’ Cappella
Best Classical Vocal Performance• Rilke Songs, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (Peter Serkin)
Best Classical Contemporary Composition
• “Golijov: Ainadamar: Fountain of Tears,” Osvaldo Golijov (Robert Spano)
Best Classical Crossover Album• Simple Gifts, Bryn Terfel (London Voices; London Symphony Orchestra)
I pay little attention to the Grammy awards anymore. It seems, wrongly perhaps, that almost the same performers win year after year. If it’s not Tilson-Thomas then it’s Boulez; and probably a Mahler symphony. Same with the Emerson Quartet. Maybe I am just bored with the whole ordeal. Or cynical.
Agreed, for the most part. But here’s a little something to the contrary: In 2005, the premiere recording of On the Transmigration of Souls (with Lorin Maazel conducting the New York Philharmonic) won three Grammy awards: Best Classical Album, Best Orchestral Performance, and Best Classical Contemporary Composition.
By the way, Adams’s work On the Transmigration of Souls, a choral work commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks, won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music. After winning the award Adams expressed “ambivalence bordering on contempt” since he felt that the prize had “lost much of the prestige it still carries in other fields” because “most of the country’s greatest musical minds” have been ignored in favor of academic music.
While I am a huge John Adams fan, On the Transmigration of Souls is not one of his best works, regardless of what the Pulitzer organization may think.