Kiri Te Kanawa received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Gramophone Awards in London, just hours after announcing her retirement from singing. The award comes twenty-five years after she won the Artist of the Year Award.
“‘If anyone has experienced success it is this possessor of one of the loveliest voices of modern times,” commented Gramophone editor in chief James Jolly.
Meanwhile Isabelle Faust won the prestigious Recording of the Year prize for her Mozart: Violin Concertos album, which had already won in the Concerto category. Released on Harmonia Mundi, the citation states the album: ‘offers a new way of hearing these deliciously Italianate masterpieces’.
It was also a big night for Vasily Petrenko, who won his second major Gramophone award when he was voted Artist of the Year. The conductor had previously been named Young Artist of the Year back in 2007.
Other awards announced on the night were Label of the Year, which went to Signum Classics, and Young Artist of the Year, which was picked up by Italian pianist Beatrice Rana.