​Best Engineered Album, Classical
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5; Barber: Adagio
Mark Donahue, engineer (Manfred Honeck & Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra)

Producer of the Year
David Frost

Best Orchestral Performance
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5; Barber: Adagio
Manfred Honeck & Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra)

Best Opera Recording
Berg: Wozzeck
Hans Graf, conductor; Anne Schwanewilms & Roman Trekel; Hans Graf & Brad Sayles, producers (Houston Symphony; Chorus Of Students And Alumni, Shepherd School Of Music, Rice University & Houston Grand Opera Children's Chorus)

Best Choral Performance
Bryars: The Fifth Century
Donald Nally, conductor (PRISM Quartet; The Crossing)

Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance
Death & The Maiden
Patricia Kopatchinskaja & The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

Best Classical Instrumental Solo
Transcendental - Daniil Trifonov

Best Classical Solo Vocal Album
Crazy Girl Crazy - Music By Gershwin, Berg & Berio
Barbara Hannigan (Orchestra Ludwig)

Best Classical Compendium
Higdon: All Things Majestic, Viola Concerto & Oboe Concerto Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor; Tim Handley, producer

Best Contemporary Classical Composition
Viola Concerto
Jennifer Higdon, composer (Roberto Díaz, Giancarlo Guerrero & Nashville Symphony)

And one more of note:

Best Historical Album
Leonard Bernstein--The Composer
Robert Russ, compilation producer; Martin Kistner and Andreas K. Meyer, mastering engineers

(from a press release)

Robert Spano has announced plans to conclude his distinguished tenure as Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) in June 2021. The 2020-21 season will mark his 20th year at the orchestra’s helm, making him one of the longest-tenured music directors of a major U.S. orchestra. Spano is one of only four music directors to lead the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in the course of its 75-year history. Following the 2020-21 season, he will assume the title of Conductor Laureate of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and will continue to conduct the orchestra on a regular basis. The 2019–20 season will mark the ASO’s 75th anniversary season, which will be celebrated with special projects and events.

Spano said: “To end an intense artistic relationship is never an easy decision to contemplate, especially one as fruitful and inspiring as the one I have enjoyed as Music Director of this outstanding American orchestra. Twenty years is a good benchmark to balance the long-term commitment I have made to the ASO with the necessity of looking towards its future as well as my own. Accordingly, I have decided to complete my tenure as Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra at the end of the 2020-21 season. I believe that together, many shared goals and dreams have been achieved. After these many years of great personal and artistic fulfillment, this is an institution that I deeply love: our devoted board members, our committed staff, our enthusiastic audiences, our talented youth orchestra, our magnificent chorus, and of course, all these extraordinary musicians who constitute the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. I look forward to many return visits in the years ahead.”

A committee will be formed to begin the search for Maestro Spano’s successor. In the meantime, the season continues with many concerts under his leadership, and the ASO looks forward to announcing its 74th season in mid-March.

An interesting article about a Juillard graduate making her own way with a new "crossover classical" project.

Read about it here.

(from a press release)

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, winner of the 2017 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, launches the new year with the first of three performances of Bartók’s First Piano Concerto at the Boston Symphony this Thursday (Jan 11–13). Back in the States this spring, he tours to Carnegie Hall (March 8) and six more key U.S. venues (March 1–13) with a solo recital program built around Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata and the eighth movement of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux. Following the success of his complete renditions of the work at the Aldeburgh, Tanglewood, and Ravinia Festivals, the Grammy Award-winning French pianist releases his first recording of the Catalogue d’oiseaux to inaugurate an exclusive new contract with the Pentatone label. Further live accounts of the Catalogue, in Paris and Amsterdam, bookend Aimard’s characteristically full and varied spring European lineup. This is highlighted by the continuation of his first year as Artist-in-Residence of London’s Southbank Centre, which sees him play Ravel’s G-major concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra (Jan 21) and curate a full weekend dedicated to the music of Ligeti (May 11–13).
 
For his return to the Boston Symphony this week, Aimard reunites with French conductor François-Xavier Roth, who was a regular guest during the pianist’s tenure as Artistic Director of England’s Aldeburgh Festival. In Boston, he and Roth join forces with the orchestra for Bartók’s percussive First Piano Concerto, in which Aimard previously impressed the New York Times with his “dazzling and crystalline performance.” It was also with the Hungarian composer’s music that he scored his fifth Grammy nomination, for his Deutsche Grammophon recording of the Concerto for Two Pianos and Percussion with Tamara Stefanovich; later this spring the two pianists reprise the work on a five-stop European tour with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski.
 
Between his two Bartók engagements, Aimard embarks on a seven-city U.S. recital tour that takes in San Diego, San Francisco, Schenectady, Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard: upcoming engagementsJan 11–13
Boston, MA
Boston Symphony Orchestra / François-Xavier Roth
BARTÓK: Piano Concerto No. 1
 
Jan 19
London, UK
Royal Academy of Music
Academy Soloists Ensemble / Aimard to direct from keyboard
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, Op. 19
 
Jan 21
London, UK
Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall
Philharmonia Orchestra / Pablo Heras-Casado
RAVEL: Piano Concerto in G
 
Jan 28
Birmingham, UK
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group / Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla
CARTER: Double Trio; Epigrams for piano trio; Two Thoughts About the Piano; Two Controversies and a Conversation
 
Jan 31
Paris, France
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France / Mikko Franck
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, Op. 19
 
Feb 8 & 9
Strasbourg, France
Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg / Marko Letonja
RAVEL: Piano Concerto in D for the left hand
 
Feb 15–22: Solo recitals in Germany, Austria, and Hungary
BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat, Op. 106 (“Hammerklavier”)
PROKOFIEV: Sarcasms, Op. 17
OBUKHOV: Révélation
SCRIABIN: Piano Sonata No. 10, Op. 70
SCRIABIN: Piano Sonata No. 5 in F-sharp, Op. 53
   Feb 15: Grünwald, Germany (Gemeinde Grünwald)
   Feb 17: Donaueschingen, Germany (Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Donaueschingen)
   Feb 19: Vienna, Austria (Musikverein)
   Feb 22: Budapest, Hungary (Jakobi Concerts)
 
March 1–13: U.S. solo recital tour
OBUKHOV: Révélation (San Diego, Schenectady, NYC)
OBUKHOV: Création d’or (San Diego, Schenectady, NYC)
LISZT: Nuages gris, S. 199 (San Diego, Schenectady, NYC)
LISZT: Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este (San Diego, Schenectady, NYC)
MESSIAEN: No. 8, “Le courlis cendré,” from Catalogue d’oiseaux (all locations)
SCRIABIN: Piano Sonata No. 5 in F-sharp, Op. 53 (San Diego, Schenectady, NYC)
LIGETI: Musica Ricercata (San Francisco, Baltimore, Philadelphia)
LIGETI: Études (Chicago)
BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat, Op. 106 (“Hammerklavier”) (all locations)
   March 1: San Diego, CA (La Jolla Music Society)
   March 2: San Francisco, CA (San Francisco Performances)
   March 4: Schenectady, NY (Union College Concert Series)
   March 6: Chicago, IL (University of Chicago Presents)
   March 8: New York, NY (Carnegie Hall)
   March 11: Baltimore, ML (Shriver Hall Concert Series)
   March 13: Philadelphia, PA (Philadelphia Chamber Music Society)
 
March 18
Paris, France
Cité de la Musique: Philharmonie de Paris
MESSIAEN: Catalogue d’oiseaux
 
March 27–April 15: tour with Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra / Vladimir Jurowski
BARTÓK: Concerto for Two Pianos and Percussion (with Tamara Stefanovich, piano)
   March 27: Dresden, Germany
   March 28: Luxembourg (Philharmonie)
   April 9: Hamburg, Germany
   April 10: Frankfurt, Germany
   April 15: Lisbon, Portugal

(from a press release)

On January 23 and 24 The Cleveland Orchestra--celebrating its 100th birthday this season--makes its 223rd and 224th appearances at Carnegie Hall.  Under longtime music director Franz Welser-Möst, they give the first New York performance of Johannes Maria Staud's Stromab, which they premiere a few weeks earlier in Cleveland, and Mahler's Symphony No. 9. Staud, who was The Cleveland Orchestra's Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow many years ago, has taken Algernon Blackwood's horror story “The Willows” as his inspiration. The second program is Haydn's The Seasons, with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, soprano Golda Schultz, tenor Maximillian Schmitt, and baritone Thomas Hampson.

The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, Music Director
Carnegie Hall
January 23, 8 pm
Staud: Stromab (Downstream) [New York Premiere]
[Co-commissioned by The Cleveland Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Vienna Konzerthaus, and Royal Danish Orchestra)
Mahler: Symphony No. 9


January 24, 8 pm
Haydn: The Seasons

Golda Schultz, Soprano
Maximilian Schmitt, Tenor
Thomas Hampson, Baritone
The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus
Lisa Wong, Acting Director of Choruses

(from a press release)

Michael Gordon presents a new chamber version of his opera Acquanetta for three sopranos, tenor, bass, female choir, and amplified chamber ensemble at the PROTOTYPE Festival in New York next week. With a libretto by Deborah Artman, the opera deconstructs the spirit of the 1940s horror movie to tell the story of Mildred Davenport, also known as both Acquanetta and the “Venezuelan Volcano,” an African-American B-movie starlet. She was Universal Pictures' first female monster in the 1943 cult horror flick Captive Wild Woman, the story of a mad scientist who turns an ape into a woman. Acquanetta recreated her identity multiple times, and ultimately vanished from Hollywood under mysterious circumstances. Gordon discovered the story when he read her obituary in The New York Times.
Gordon says, “Acquanetta's obituary caught my imagination. I liked her name—Acquanetta had undergone identity transformations on her path to stardom. Then she suddenly vanished. Librettist Deborah Artman and I started to sleuth. This was before Wikipedia—there was no information online. People were guarded, but they hinted that there was more to Acquanetta's story than was known. In Captive Wild Woman, her blockbuster hit, a mad doctor turns an ape into a woman. The woman is Acquanetta and she doesn't say a word throughout the entire movie. This three- minute scene seemed to be the perfect model on which to build the opera. Each actor in the scene was a personality in their own right. Even the Ape, whose career consisted of playing monsters in B-movies, had a story to tell. The entire opera is a look at that three-minute scene, a look into the private thoughts of the actors playing the roles.”
This chamber version, commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, produced in association with Bang on a Can and Trinity Church Wall Street, and presented at the Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center, is the first production of the piece since the earlier version in 2005 in Germany. The characters are the Doctor, the Ape, the Brainy Woman (who gives her brain to the experiment), the Director, and Acquanetta herself. Each character speaks both as the film's characters and as the actors playing their parts for a camera that manipulates who they are. As Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times said of the original, “The opera turns the story of that campy film's star into a somberly ritualistic meditation on public versus private identities.”
When Acquanetta premiered in grand opera format, the press in Aachen was equally enthusiastic. "The theatergoer who is prepared for a transposition of familiar elements into a new conception will hardly be able to pull himself away from the entertaining density of Acquanetta.... Without ever losing inner momentum, the musicians of the orchestra plumb the contrasting depths of meditative calm and powerful energy with precision and technically based self-confidence," said Brigitte Kempen, Aachener Nachrichten/Aachener Zeitung, while Hanns Mänhardt of Super Sonntag called it "A fascinating experience of modern psychological theater."


Acquanetta

January 9 – 13 at 7:30pm
January 14 at 6 pm
Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center
Brooklyn, NY

Robert Mann, a founding member of the Juilliard Quartet, has died at the age of 97.

He helped form the quartet in the 1940s, and served as first violinist.

The New York Times has more here.

Happy New Year from Classical Music Today, and the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg!

Check out the video found here.