Gramophone magazine has announced the six winners of its 2004
Gramophone
Record Awards — each with its own knight or dame champion, a celebrity
who will argue the merits of his/her chosen disc in a media campaign waged
through the month of September.
This novel change in procedure follows a thorough revamp of the Gramophone Awards that took place last year. Prior to 2003, a shortlist of nominees in each of several categories (of which there were 12 or more by 2001, ranging from Baroque Instrumental to Concerto to Historical Reissue) was announced in August or September, with winners in each category and the Record of the Year (selected from among the category winners) named at an autumn ceremony in London. In recent years, the Gramophone Awards presentation had become a gala event not unlike the Grammys, Oscars or BAFTAs, with thank-you speeches, performances by bona fide classical music stars, expensive evening wear and lots of promotional acitivities by the various record labels.
Last year the magazine streamlined the structure of the awards, relegating the dozen or so winners to "Best of Category" status and naming six of those titles to receive what are now called Gramophone Record Awards; those six discs then become finalists for Record of the Year.
In early August, Gramophone announced this year's innovation: each of the six candidates for the 2004 Record of the Year prize now has a designated celebrity spokesperson who will promote the merits of his or her chosen disc on British television and radio and in the press. Following a month of these competing campaigns, the ultimate winner will be chosen in balloting by a group of broadcasters, retailers and critics. (The public can also participate by voting at Gramophone's Web site, www.gramophone.co.uk.) The Record of the Year will be named not at a glamorous, performance-filled evening ceremony but at a luncheon on 1 October in London.
Anticipating criticism that these changes amount to a dumbing-down of the most prestigious classical recording honors in the English-speaking world, James Jolly, Gramophone's editor in chief, defended the new procedures when they were introduced last month. "Any awards process in the consumer world is really judged on whether it stimulates the market," he told The Independent of London, "the idea that if you're only going to buy one classical record a year, it must be the Gramophone Record of the Year or [one of] the six shortlisted records of the year ... The sad thing in this day and age is that it's all about celebrities."
And one could argue that a change from the glamor- and promotion-filled Oscar-type awards process of previous years to an advertising-driven "election campaign" is hardly a lowering of intellectual level, however much less genteel it may appear.
The 2004 Gramophone Award Winners and Finalists for Record
of the Year
Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro
Gens, Ciofi, McLaughlin, Rial,
Kirchschlager,
van Rensburg, Keenlyside, Regazzo, Abete
Collegium Vocale of
Ghent / Concerto Köln / René Jacobs
Harmonia Mundi
Celebrity champion:
Joanna Lumley, television and stage
actress best known as Patsy of
Absolutely Fabulous.
Gibbons: Consorts for Viols
Phantasm
Avie Records
Celebrity
champion: John Simpson, World Affairs Editor
for BBC News and longtime
British television journalist.
Bax: The Symphonies
BBC Philharmonic / Vernon
Handley
Chandos
Celebrity champion: Michael Portillo,
Conservative Member of Parliament and
former UK Secretary of State for Defense.
Gérard Souzay — Mélodies by
Chausson, Debussy, Ravel and
Duparc
Gérard Souzay / Dalton
Baldwin
Testament
Celebrity champion: Natasha Kaplinsky, BBC
television
presenter, currently co-host of BBC Breakfast.
Grieg and Schumann: Piano Concertos
Leif Ove Andsnes / Berlin
Philharmonic / Mariss Jansons
EMI Classics
Celebrity champion: James
Cracknell, British oarsman,
Olympic gold medalist in 2000 and 2004.
Vivaldi: Vespri solenni per la festa dell'Assunzione di Maria
Vergine
Invernizzi, Bertagnolli, Simboli, Mingardo, Ferrarini,
Bellotto
Concerto Italiano / Rinaldo Alessandrini
Naïve / Opus
111
Celebrity champion: Simon Callow, author and
stage and film actor best
known for appearances in
A Room with a View, Four Weddings and a
Funeral
and Shakespeare in Love.
