The BRIT Classic Awards 2010 - Show Programme

THURSDAY 13TH MAY
THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL
Your programme comes with
the compliments of NS&I

EMI Classics congratulates
its nominees at this year’s
Classical BRIT Awards
Angela Gheorghiu
Female Artist of the Year
“ Gheorghiu’s Cio-Cio-San…has femininity, fragility
and steely resolve, and she rises to the big moments
with scrupulous musicianship.” The Financial Times
Thomas Adès
Composer of the Year
“ All the orchestral writing, expertly played, comes
across powerfully… Textures are luminous and
clear …in this excellent recording.” The Observer
Antonio Pappano
Male Artist of the Year
Critics’ Award
“One of the most vividly Italianate accounts of
Verdi’s great work in recent years. Pappano’s
Santa Cecilia chorus and orchestra have this
music in their blood.” The Sunday Times
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
Lifetime Achievement in Music
As this year’s Co-Chairmen for the show, it has
been both an honour and a privilege to work
with the Classical BRITs committee to deliver
this evening’s event. The Classical BRIT Awards
by definition reflect the successes of the
previous year and provide a platform for some
of the greatest classical perfomers from both
the UK and abroad; but it is also an important
showcase for new, young talent, and indeed
many previous performers have gone on to
be award winners themselves. Tonight we are
pleased to present a young mezzo-soprano, Julia
Lezhneva, who joins us from her native Moscow.
The presence of classical music in the home is greater than ever
before, and the Classical BRIT Awards strives to celebrate this.
Tonight sees the welcome return of some of the greatest opera
singers in the world: Angela Gheorghiu, Bryn Terfel and Rolando
Villazón; we also look forward to unique collaborations with
Only Men Aloud and Rhydian, as well as a celebration of the
most popular aria - 'Nessun Dorma!', featuring Blake, Camilla
Kerslake and Howard Goodall’s Enchanted Voices; and for many,
we offer the first opportunity to witness the phenomenon that
is André Rieu and his Johann Strauss Orchestra, a combination
that has dominated the UK pop charts in recent weeks. Add
to that the rousing, stirring sight and sound of the Band Of
the Coldstream Guards, and we have a show that reflects the
glorious, broad spectrum of classical music as we know it today.
We would like to give our special congratulations to
the recipient of this year’s Outstanding Achievement
in Music Award, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, a very special
artist who has made friends and delighted audiences
here in the UK for so long. We are delighted that
Dame Kiri has kindly accepted our invitation.
We are pleased once more to enjoy the generous
sponsorship of NS&I and the continued support from our
friends at Classic FM and ITV. We also thank the show’s
producers Chloe Mason and Helen Terry, director Nikki
Parsons, our wonderful host Myleene Klass and of course
everyone working behind the scenes to make this evening
possible. The proceeds from this evening’s Classical
BRIT Awards will benefit the BRIT Trust, a donor charity
that primarily funds the BRIT School for Performing Arts
and Technology, and Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy.
We wish you a most enjoyable, entertaining
and exciting evening.
Barry McCann
Mark Wilkinson
Welcome to the
Royal Albert Hall to
celebrate the eleventh
Classical BRIT Awards.
CONTENTS
2 Tonight's Host - Myleene Klass
3 Our sponsor, NS&I
4 The Classical BRIT Awards Welcome, London Chamber
Orchestra and Christopher Warren-Green
5 Tonight’s Performances
PERFORMERS
9 Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Lifetime Achievement In Music
10 Bryn Terfel
11 Band of the Coldstream Guards
15 Rhydian and Only Men Aloud
16 Camilla Kerslake and Blake
17 Howard Goodall and Enchanted Voices
22 Rolando Villazón and Angela Gheorghiu
23 Andre Rieu and Julia Lezhnea
21 The BRIT Trust
24 The Classical BRITs Launch
35 The BRIT School
THE AWARDS
26 Male Artist of the Year
27 Female Artist of the Year
28 NS&I Album of the Year
30 Young British Classical Performer or Group
31 Composer of the Year
33 Soundtrack of the Year
34 Critics’ Award
AT-A-GLANCE GUIDE
36 The Classical BRIT Awards Nominations in Full
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Co-Chairmen: Barry McCann & Mark Wilkinson

Back by popular demand for her
third innings as our host, Myleene
is certainly no stranger to the
Classical BRIT Awards. She was
nominated for the Album of the
Year Award in 2004 and graduated
to present the show four years
later. The Norfolk girl studied
singing at the Guildhall School
of Music’s junior department
before training in musical theatre
at the Royal Academy of Music.
Her experience as a performer
spans everything from pop chart
success with Hear’Say to recording
classical piano pieces for Universal
Classics and Jazz and EMI Classics.
As a television and radio
broadcaster, Myleene is in a class
of her own. She’s shown us how
to roll back the years as host of
Channel 4’s hit series 10 Years
Younger, presented BBC1’s Saturday
primetime show Last Choir Standing,
and is the familiar voice of Classic
FM’s Weekend Breakfast. And
she continues to interview the
cream of Hollywood’s movie stars
in her monthly Screening Room
show on CNN International.
At the beginning of this year Myleene
joined forces with Alan Titchmarsh to
present ITV1’s Popstar to Operastar.
“It's a series of perfect combinations
for me – classical and pop music –
it’s both my worlds colliding into
one,” she said of the show. “It's
also live TV, so anything can happen
as genuinely talented singers push
themselves and their boundaries
to see what they can achieve.”
Myleene Klass
NS&I Album of the Year
Alma Mater – Music from the Vatican
Featuring the voice of Pope Benedict XVI
Geffen
Together
Blake
Blake Music
Camilla Kerslake
Camilla Kerslake
Future Records
Heroes
Band of the Coldstream Guards
Decca
Faryl
Faryl
Decca
Voices of the Valley – Memory Lane
Fron Male Voice Choir
Decca
Enchanted Voices
Howard Goodall’s Enchanted Voices
Classic FM
Band of Brothers
Only Men Aloud
Decca
O Fortuna
Rhydian
Syco Music
Welcome to The Classical BRIT Awards 2010!
NS&I (National Savings and Investments) is proud
to support this prestigious classical music event
for the seventh consecutive year, held here in the
beautiful surroundings of the Royal Albert Hall.
NS&I has developed a close relationship with the world of
classical music, having sponsored the Classic FM morning
show since 2002. And like classical music, we also have
a rich heritage, in our case stretching all the way back to
1861 when our very first savings account was introduced.
Each year exceptional ability in classical music is honoured
at The Classical BRIT Awards. And tonight we celebrate the
achievements of both world renowned artists and young
British talent. It is thanks to your continued support that
this talent is able to thrive and bring so much delight to
so many people. Our congratulations go to all the winners
and nominees - we wish them every success for the future.
Much like these awards, NS&I is constantly evolving.
From our award winning call centre to our unique product
range and our online presence at nsandi.com, we are
dedicated to bringing you a stronger and even better
performance each year. We’ve expanded our offering of
savings products this year, and with a goal to continually
modernise, we are offering more of these savings and
investments directly, through our website and call centre.
In addition, through initiatives such as You and your
money (youandyourmoney.info), a website dedicated
to increasing the public’s understanding of finance, and
mylostaccount.org.uk which helps people trace savings they
may have lost or forgotten, we seek to provide people with
straightforward, secure and impartial help with their finances.
Harmony
The Priests
Epic
Back to tonight and The Classical BRIT Awards celebrating
its eleventh anniversary and going from strength to
strength. On behalf of everyone at NS&I, I would like to
congratulate the BPI on what promises to be another
spectacular event and wish you a very enjoyable evening.
photo: john marshall / jmenternational
Jane Platt
Chief Executive, NS&I
nsandi.com

London Chamber
Orchestra & Christopher
Warren-Green
Tonight’s Performances
Welcome to a truly
amazing evening of
celebration, glamour
and excitement.
The Classical BRIT Awards enter their
second decade with a sensational
programme of performances and a
line-up of winners to rival any in the
annual show’s history. Tonight’s event
embraces the very best in classical
music, unleashing the emotional power
of great artists at work and honouring
recordings by some of the most talented
and versatile performers in the business.
In an age of economic uncertainty and
rapid technological change, it also
reminds us of the essential value of
music that has endured for centuries.
Since its creation in 2000, the Classical
BRITs have aimed to widen the audience
for an art form that deserves to be heard
by the many. The show’s broadcast on
ITV1, the support of Classic FM and the
backing of our sponsors have contributed to
the incredible reach that the Classical BRIT
Awards enjoy today. We also pay tribute to
you, our audience here tonight in the Royal
Albert Hall. For live music-making to take
wing, performers need to communicate heart
and soul and connect with every listener
in the house. That special relationship has
always come to life at the Classical BRITs.
We’re sure it shall again this year.
Our list of nominees, winners and performers
reflects the musical diversity of today’s classical
recording industry. Major record companies
and enterprising independent labels released
an extraordinary number of new albums last
year. Even if you listened only to the albums,
artists and works mentioned in this programme
book, you’d hear Tudor church music and
Tom Adès’s latest opera, the dances of Old
Vienna and Bernstein’s iconoclastic Mass,
Howard Goodall’s ethereal sounds and hearton-sleeve
Verdi, and foot-tapping tunes
from the parade ground. Happy listening!
Its string sound has been compared favourably with that
produced by the illustrious Berlin Philharmonic, its performances
hailed for their rip-roaring energy, passion and excitement. The
London Chamber Orchestra, founded in 1921 by the English
conductor, pianist and composer Anthony Bernard, stands
today as the UK’s longest established professional chamber
orchestra. It made its debut at the London home of Nancy Astor,
the first woman to take her seat as a Member of Parliament.
The LCO restored many long
neglected works of early
music to the repertoire but
disbanded following Bernard’s
death in 1963. It was revived
in the 1980s under the artistic
leadership of Christopher
Warren-Green, securing an
international reputation since
thanks to the brilliance of its
outstanding musicians and their
characterful performances. HRH
The Duchess of Cornwall became
the orchestra’s patron in 2005.
“You can see what’s different
about LCO in the faces of our
musicians – every one of whom
has been selected from the finest
professional musicians the UK
has to offer,” says the orchestra’s
website. A stack of glowing press
reviews bears witness to the LCO’s
achievements in performance
and on disc. Recent recordings
on the LCO Live label caught the
full flavour of the orchestra’s London concert series at St John’s,
Smith Square. If you’ve never heard them in performance before,
keep a watch on the LCO’s website for its forthcoming diary dates.
Christopher Warren-Green has been music director and principal
conductor of the London Chamber Orchestra since 1988. The
Gloucestershire-born musician made his name as a violinist,
becoming leader of the world famous Academy of St Martin
in the Fields at the age of nineteen. Five years later, he was
appointed concertmaster of the Philharmonia Orchestra and
has worked as permanent or guest leader with many of the
world’s leading symphony orchestras. His credits as conductor
include guest engagements with the St Louis Symphony, the
National Symphony and Seattle Symphony orchestras in the
United States, appearances with the Philharmonia, the London
Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and BBC
Concert Orchestra in the UK, and dates with the Hong Kong
Sinfonietta and the NHK Symphony Orchestra in the Far East.
In 1998, Christopher was appointed chief conductor of the Jönköping
Sinfonietta and held the post until 2002. He was also chief conductor of
the Sundsvall Chamber Orchestra from 2001 until 2005, and succeeded
Sir Neville Marriner as principal conductor of the Orchestra of the
Megaron in Athens in October 2004. He made his conducting debut
with the Philadelphia Orchestra in December 2007, recently returned to
work with the Minnesota Orchestra and begins his latest appointment
as music director of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra in September.
Christopher conducted members of the Philharmonia at the wedding
of The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall in 2005, reaching
a massive audience thanks to the ceremony’s worldwide television
broadcast. The conductor returned to the small screen in 2008 as
mentor to Jane Asher in BBC2’s Maestro series. His next concert
with the LCO takes place at St John’s, Smith Square on 26 May.
André Rieu
Johann Strauss I (1804-49
Radetzky March Op.228
Students of European history will know
that Field-Marshal Joseph Radetzky and
his Austro-Hungarian army ruthlessly
suppressed Italian rebels in the great
uprisings of 1848-9. His actions, admired
by Johann Strauss I, stood for Austrian
imperial authority. The younger Johann
Strauss, meanwhile, was sympathetic to
the revolutionary cause. Strauss senior
penned his Radetzky March in support
of the established order, dedicating the
score not just to an old soldier but to
the entire Austrian army. Both Strausses,
father and son, hedged their business
bets, however, by writing works to suit
the tastes of Viennese conservatives and
liberals. And Johan Strauss II adopted his
father’s barnstorming Radetzky March as an
essential part of his orchestra’s repertoire.
Johann Strauss II (1825-99), Franz
Lehár (1870-1948) and others
Strauss & Co
In the 1830s and 1840s the orchestras
of Vienna’s imperial Redoutensaal and
the popular Sperl-Ballroom played newly
composed tunes to delight vast audiences,
often inducing a state of frenzy by the
audacious energy of dances such as the
waltz, the polka and quadrille. The Viennese
dance craze took hold, was fuelled by the
life-enhancing work of the ‘Waltz King’,
Johann Strauss II, and spread like wildfire
around the world. Later composers, the
Hungarian-born Franz Lehár among them,
ensured that the tradition flourished and
set down deep roots. André Rieu and
his Johann Strauss Orchestra explore the
work of Strauss & Co in a medley spanning
everything from the ‘Blue Danube’ to the
‘Merry Widow’ waltzes. Strauss’s ‘Blue
Danube’ began life as a piece for malevoice
chorus to be performed during
Vienna’s carnival season in 1867, the words
of which mocked the Prussian victors over
Austria at the recent Battle of Königgrätz.
London Chamber Orchestra
and Christopher Warren-Green
Johannes Brahms (1833-97)
Hungarian Dances No.5 in G
minor and No.6 in D major
During his Hamburg boyhood, Brahms
frequently performed with his father in
the city’s coffee houses. The prodigiously
talented youngster memorised a wealth of
popular music and, thanks to his contact
with refugees escaping the suppression
of the 1848 Hungarian uprising, learned
the alla zingarese or ‘gypsy’ style. Folk
and popular elements pervade much of
Brahms’s mature work. The composer’s
twenty-one Hungarian Dances, originally
written for piano duet in the 1850s and
1860s, draw heavily from folk and gypsy
music sources. Their popularity ensured
that many pieces from the set were
subsequently arranged for orchestra. The
fifth Hungarian Dance is based on the
catchy csárdás Bártfai, emlék by former
military bandmaster Kéler Béla, which
Brahms mistook for a traditional folk tune.
Angela Gheorghiu
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)
‘Un bel dì vedremo’ from
Madama Butterfly
Giacomo Puccini, to say the least, had
a colourful personal life, pursuing extramarital
affairs with unrestrained vigour: his
wife took to sprinkling his trousers with
bromide in the hope of reducing her man’s
libido-fuelled wanderlust. Having minted
an international hit with his opera Manon
Lescaut, the composer scored another in
1896 with La bohème. Although Madama
Butterfly, first performed at La Scala in 1904,
failed to please its Milanese audience, a
staging of the opera’s revised version a few
months later proved a sensation. Cio-Cio
San, known as Madam Butterfly, is betrothed
to Pinkerton, a lieutenant in the American
navy. The Yankee rover leaves Japan after
their marriage. Butterfly, who long yearns
for his return, predicts that ‘Un bel dì’
(‘One beautiful day’) a ship will appear
on the horizon with Pinkerton onboard.
Rhydian and Only Men Aloud
Nellee Hooper (1963), Craig Armstrong
(b.1959) and Marius de Vries (b.1961)
O Verona (arr. and orch. Armstrong)
Ancestral voices emerge loud and clear
from the pulsating depths of O Verona. This
mighty choral score evokes the world of
ancient ritual and also delivers a compelling
homage to the music of Carl Orff. The
composition stands as the opening track
of Band of Brothers, Only Men Aloud’s
best-selling second album. “I wanted it
to be the kind of album that, if you were
driving through a huge, open landscape,
you would play on your car stereo,” notes
OMA’s founder Tim Rhys-Evans. His wish
was granted thanks to the combined
creative work of Nellee Hooper (Grammy
Award-nominated composer and producer),
Craig Amstrong (Golden Globe winner for
the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin
Rouge!) and Marius de Vries (double BAFTAwinning
composer and producer). You can
be sure Only Men Aloud will turn the dial up
to eleven for their live version of O Verona.
Carl Orff (1895-1982)
‘O Fortuna’ from Carmina burana
To the medieval mind the goddess Fortune
represented earthly life’s inconstancy, small
wonder given that incurable disease, famine,
violent crime and persecution were part of
the era’s daily grind. The wandering scholars
who penned the compendious verses now
known as the Carmina burana, appreciated
that a good drink, a rich meal, and a night
spent gambling or in bed with a prostitute
were bound to improve the quality of
their lot. Carl Orff’s lusty setting of lyrics
from the Carmina burana, first performed
in Frankfurt in 1937, catches their earthy
essence and the sense of life’s vanity and
transience. The cantata’s breathless opening
chorus, ‘O Fortuna’, reminds listeners of the
relentless turn of Fortune’s wheel and her
capricious nature. The composition made
a splash in the 1970s as the backing music
for the classic sun, sea and surf Old Spice
commercial, reached a new audience as the
theme tune for The X Factor’s jury and was
recently identified by royalties collection
body PPL as the ‘most listened to classical
piece’ of the past seventy-five years.
4
5

Tonight’s Performances
Continued…
Rolando Villazón
Jacques Offenbach (1819-80)
‘Legend of Kleinzach’
from Les contes d’Hoffmann
In October 1833, young Jacques Offenbach
only needed to play a fraction of the
sight-reading test set for his Paris
Conservatoire entrance audition. The
institution’s notoriously testy director, Luigi
Cherubini, immediately offered the boy
a place. “My father wrote home about
all this,” Offenbach’s sister Julie later
recalled, “and my mother let her tears fall
on the stove as she read it.” Although the
teenager’s musical talents were already
inclined towards composition, he made
first his name as a virtuoso cellist. In May
1844 he played at Windsor Castle for an
Ascot Week banquet, a date that prepared
the ground for the subsequent and lasting
popularity of his music in Britain. Offenbach’s
penultimate opera Les contes d’Hoffmann
(‘The tales of Hoffmann’) crowned a run of
smash hit stage works launched in 1858
with Orphée aux enfers. Early in the work’s
first act, when Hoffmann regales his fellow
students with the tale of the hapless dwarf
Kleinzach, whose nose was black from
tobacco and whose head went ‘cric-crac!’
INTERVAL (30 minutes)
Bryn Terfel
Giacomo Puccini
‘Tre sbirri, una carrozza’ from Tosca
Puccini’s ‘shabby little shocker’, as one
critic unwisely described it at the time of
its premiere in January 1900, has become
a mainstay of the international opera
repertoire, a masterpiece blessed with
the dramatic force necessary to hold its
spellbound audience from its frenetic
opening to its catastrophic conclusion.
The opera’s first act is set in the Church
of Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome, where
the congregation is preparing to sing
the Te Deum, a great hymn of praise
to celebrate their mistaken belief that
Napoleon’s forces have been defeated
at the Battle of Marengo. Baron Scarpia,
chief of police, arrives in search of an
escaped prisoner. In a chilling monologue,
he vows to destroy his rival Cavaradossi
and secure the favours of the opera singer
Floria Tosca. As the choir intones the Te
Deum, the dark-hearted Scarpia declares,
‘Tosca, you make me forget God!’
The Band of the
Coldstream Guards
Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
‘Nimrod’ from the ‘Enigma’ Variations
Eric Coates (1886-1957)
Dambusters March
Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004)
March from The Great Escape
Three instantly recognisable compositions form
this evening’s medley of works arranged for
military band. Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ was conceived in
1898-9 as one of the composer’s Variations on
an Original Theme for orchestra ‘Enigma’. The
work’s poignant blend of nobility, repose and
nostalgia ideally matched the ceremonial needs
of the national Remembrance service held
annually at the Cenotaph in Whitehall on the
second Sunday of November. Elgar supplied
music for the dedication of the Cenotaph in
1920, while the military band version of his
‘Nimrod’ soon became a permanent part of the
Remembrance service’s musical programme.
Eric Coates turned to composition after
he was dismissed as principal violist of
Henry Wood’s Queen’s Hall Orchestra. The
enforced career change proved a disguised
blessing, one that Coates fully recognised
after his orchestral scores attracted popular
acclaim and the support of senior composers
and conductors, Elgar and Sir Adrian Boult
not least among them. His ‘valse serenade’
By a sleepy lagoon, written in 1930, is
heard regularly today as the theme music
to BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, while
his contribution to the soundtrack of the
1955 British film The Dam Busters ranks
among the most performed marches in
the military band book. In fact, Coates
composed The Dambusters shortly before
he received the commission to supply a
march for Michael Anderson’s movie about
the Royal Air Force’s daring ‘bouncing
bomb’ raid on the Ruhr dams in May 1943.
We can expect to hear Elmer Bernstein’s
march time and again this summer as
England’s World Cup campaign unfolds and
the nation’s football fans turn to the music
of The Great Escape for inspiration. The
composer recalled how Hollywood director
John Sturges insisted that he should not
read the script for his 1963 movie The Great
Escape before writing its soundtrack score.
“He took me into his office and told me the
story,” Bernstein noted shortly before his
death. “He was a great storyteller. When
you waked out of that office, you knew
exactly what to do. You knew what to do
because of the way he told the story.”
The movie’s swaggering march theme
stands as a film music classic and a fitting
tribute to the wartime prisoners, would-be
escapees and victims of Stalag Luft III.
Blake, Enchanted Voices,
Camilla Kerslake and
Howard Goodall
Giacomo Puccini
‘Nessun dorma!’ from Turandot
Unless you happened to be holidaying on
Mars at the time of the 1990 World Cup
finals, you would have heard Puccini’s
‘Nessun dorma!’ (‘None shall sleep!’) at every
turn. The show-stopping aria from Turandot
proved an inspired choice as theme music
for the football tournament’s Italian staging.
Luciano Pavarotti’s incomparable Decca
recording of it climbed to second place in
the UK pop single charts and, thanks to
the great tenor’s vibrant tone and heartfelt
interpretation, established Puccini’s song
as an icon of popular culture. It has been
covered since by everyone from Aretha
Franklin and Michael Bolton to Paul Potts
and Antony Hegarty. Howard Goodall’s
new choral arrangement pays tribute to
one of classical music’s greatest hits.
London Chamber Orchestra
and Christopher Warren-Green
Modest Petrovich Musorgsky (1839-81)
Night on Bald Mountain
One of the most original and passionate
members of a distinctly national school of
nineteenth-century Russian composers,
Modest Musorgsky regarded himself as a
poorly educated, inadequate musician. His
early musical development was influenced
by the folk-songs taught to him by his
nurse. He attended the imperial guards’
cadet school in St Petersburg, and served
as a soldier and civil servant while studying
composition privately. Dipsomania, epilepsy
and severe depression marked the final
years of Musorgsky’s troubled life, which
ended in the Nikolaevsky Military Hospital
shortly after his forty-second birthday.
Night on Bald Mountain, originally written
in 1867 and posthumously revised by
Rimsky-Korsakov, thrillingly evokes Gogol’s
spine-tingling tale of a witches’ sabbath.
Julia Lezhneva
Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868)
‘Fra il padre, e fra l’amante’
from La Cenerentola
Born on a leap-year day into a family of
professional musicians in Pesaro, young
Rossini was encouraged by his father to
learn to play the horn, violin and viola.
The boy also sang, began to compose and
directed church services and occasional
opera performances from the keyboard.
He was accepted as a pupil at the Liceo
Musicale in Bologna in 1806, where he
studied singing, piano, cello and the
techniques of composition. A few years later
Rossini was commissioned to compose a
two-act opera, yielding the first of a series
of stage works created during his teens.
Two breakthrough works, the tragedy
Tancredi and wildly comic L’Italiana in Algeri,
established Rossini as Italy’s foremost opera
composer. La Donna del Lago, based on Sir
Walter Scott’s romantic poem The Lady of
the Lake, was first performed in October
1819 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.
At the opera’s conclusion Elena sings of
her joy that her father has finally given
his blessing to her marriage to the young
Scottish warrior Malcolm. ‘Fra il padre, e
fra l’amante’ (‘Between the father and the
lover’) brings the opera to a thrilling close.
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91)
‘Ach, ich fühl’s’ from Die Zauberflöte
Italian opera topped the European pops
throughout the eighteenth century. Around
1750, however, an enchanting mixture of
spoken and sung drama made its way to the
public stages of Leipzig, Berlin and Vienna,
presented in German by native artists.
Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (‘The Magic Flute’)
was composed for the Viennese suburban
Theater auf der Wieden, with comedy and
high drama part of its irresistible package.
In this ‘play with singing’, Tamino, a foreign
prince, falls in love with Pamina, daughter
of the Queen of Night. Pamina, tormented
by the malevolent Monostatos, is confused
and frightened. Her despair deepens when
Tamino, under a vow of silence, refuses to
speak to her. In response, Pamina considers
taking her life in the profoundly moving aria,
‘Ach ich fühl’s’ (‘Ah, I feel that all is past’).
Photos left to right:
Katherine Jenkins and Plácido Domingo 2009,
above and inset, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa 2006.
photos jmenternational
6
7

EMI Classics congratulates
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
Lifetime Achievement in Music
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
Lifetime Achievement in Music
Visit us online for new release information, catalogue search, music and video, podcasts, concert listings, artist features and more!
www.emiclassics.co.uk www.youtube.com/emiclassics www.facebook.com/emivirginclassics www.twitter.com/emiclassics
Around 600 million television viewers
were entranced by Kiri Te Kanawa’s
performance at the wedding of HRH The
Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer in
1981. Her beguiling delivery of Handel’s
‘Let the bright Seraphim’ left a lasting
mark on audiences from Abergavenny to
Auckland, Shetland to Sydney. The radiant
warmth and crisp freshness of the lyric
soprano’s voice, qualities which had long
since made her a star of the opera stage,
touched one of the largest live audiences in
global broadcasting history and attracted
countless newcomers to the singer’s art.
Kiri continues to reach the many, not least
through her gala performances to raise
money for her charitable organisation,
the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation, which
aims to offer support and financial aid to
New Zealand singers and musicians.
Last month she sang the Marschallin in Richard
Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier in Cologne,
returning to a role that she has practically
owned for most of her career. In addition to
shaping sublime interpretations of Strauss and
other signature roles, Dame Kiri’s services to
music have also included signal contributions
to narrowing the gap between audiences
for opera and Broadway musicals. Her
explorations of popular repertoire, including
new pieces by Karl Jenkins and music by
Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, have played
their part here; likewise, her performance as
Maria (alongside the Tony of José Carreras)
in Leonard Bernstein’s 1984 Grammy Awardwinning
recording of West Side Story.
A busy international schedule of concerts
and public masterclasses with young singers
confirm that retirement is definitely not on
the cards for one of the world’s best-loved
classical artists. Dame Kiri performed with
star students from her Solti-Te Kanawa
Accademia at the Tower of London Festival
last September, reminding listeners of the rich
beauties of a voice that has been dazzling
London audiences for over forty years.
The Kiri Te Kanawa story began in March
1944 in Gisborne, New Zealand. Her adoptive
parents encouraged her early musical talent
which led the teenage Kiri to national success
as a popular entertainer. Her irresistible voice,
developed during lessons in Auckland with
Sister Mary Leo, delivered pop chart success
when Kiri’s recording of the ‘Nun’s Chorus’
from Johann Strauss’s operetta Casanova
became New Zealand’s first gold disc. In
1966 she travelled to England to study at
the London Opera Centre. Kiri, feted for
her early onstage appearances at Sadler’s
Wells Theatre, joined the Royal Opera’s
house ensemble as a junior principal in 1970.
Sir Colin Davis recalls hearing her audition
a year earlier for the Camden Festival: “I
couldn't believe my ears,” he says. “I've
taken thousands of auditions, but it was
such a fantastically beautiful voice.” Soprano
and conductor have worked together in the
opera house and recording studio many
times since, one of several partnerships that
have influenced and informed the singer’s
total commitment to musical excellence.
Dame Kiri became synonymous with the role
of Mozart’s Countess in The Marriage of Figaro
in her early years at Covent Garden and at
New York’s Metropolitan Opera. She went on
to achieve legendary status as an interpreter
of the great operatic roles of Mozart, Verdi,
Puccini and Richard Strauss, becoming a
regular guest artist at the world’s leading opera
houses and festivals. Kiri’s discography includes
such essential recordings as her 1977 account
of Mozart’s Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, regarded
by many critics as the finest on disc; a peerless
album of Mozart arias with Sir Colin Davis
and the London Symphony Orchestra, and
her assumption of the Countess for Sir Georg
Solti’s first recording of The Marriage of Figaro.
Appointed a Dame of the British Empire in
1982, Kiri Te Kanawa’s services to music include
invaluable contributions to narrowing the gap
between audiences for opera and Broadway
musicals. Her albums of songs by Berlin,
Gershwin and Kern, recorded in collaboration
with such masters of the medium as Jonathan
Tunick, John McGlinn and Laurie Holloway,
reflect the glorious breadth of Dame Kiri’s
artistry. “Te Kanawa's voice, vibrant but mellow,
ample but unforced, impressed from the first
with its freshness and warmth,” wrote John
Steane in his biographical entry on the singer
for Grove’s Dictionary of Music. The veteran
opera critic’s analysis is apt to describe the
full range of Dame Kiri’s career over more
than four decades. This year’s Classical BRIT
Award for Lifetime Achievement in Music
honours a unique performer, one whose
magical artistry continues to move, charm
and inspire audiences around the world.
9

Bryn Terfel
When it comes to having the ideal
qualifications for the job, no one can quite
match Bryn Terfel’s claims on the role of Hans
Sachs. The Welsh bass-baritone certainly
owns the ideal voice to do justice to the
most human and noble of Wagner’s operatic
characters. He has spent years studying,
exploring and practising for the part. And like
Sachs, Bryn is a true mastersinger, a member
of the Gorsedd of Bards and an ambassador
for his nation’s culture. Opera-lovers and
critics will travel from all points of the compass
next month to hear Bryn make his debut
in Welsh National Opera’s new production
of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Wales
Millennium Centre has already hosted Bryn’s
acclaimed portrayal of Verdi’s Falstaff. It
is set to receive his eagerly awaited first
performance as Sachs on 19 June, one of the
hottest dates in this year’s opera calendar.
Music and singing were part of Bryn’s
inheritance, genetically bequeathed by his
fine-voiced mother and father. He left the
family farm in Pant Glas, north Wales, to study
singing at London’s Guildhall School of Music
and Drama. A peerless combination of natural
talent, hard graft and dedication ensured that
Bryn was noticed far beyond the conservatoire’s
Barbican campus. His appearance in the
1989 Cardiff Singer of the World competition
contributed to the celebrated Battle of the
Baritones, with Bryn narrowly beaten in the final
by Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The following year he
made his operatic debut with Welsh National
Opera in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, effectively
launching a stratospheric career trajectory that
swiftly brought him to the hallowed stages of
the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, New
York’s Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna State
Opera and Milan’s La Scala. In recent years
he has grown into the mighty Wagner roles,
Wotan and Sachs among them, without losing
the lyrical freshness and brio required to deliver
commanding performances of works by Mozart,
Handel, Verdi and Puccini. The breadth of
Bryn’s repertoire, not to mention his penchant
for a spot of onstage villainy, surfaced proudly
in his last album for Deutsche Grammophon.
Bad Boys turned the spotlight on arias sung by
the malevolent likes of Mephistopheles, Don
Giovanni, Mack the Knife, Sweeney Todd and
Iago. “Terfel is now far more than a singer,”
observed The Times after one of Bryn’s Bad
Boy tour dates. “He’s a national institution.”
Bryn continued the bad lad theme at New
York’s Metropolitan Opera last month when he
appeared as Baron Scarpia in Tosca.
Thanks to a new promotional deal with
Universal Music and Raymond Gubbay, the
forty-four-year-old artist’s Faenol Festival is
set to enter its second decade this August.
Keep a watch on www.brynfest.com for
details of the late summer bank holiday event.
Meanwhile, you can catch Bryn at work in Die
Meistersinger in production in Cardiff and at
the Birmingham Hippodrome.
The Band of the Coldstream Guards
We think of massed military bands, resplendent in red
tunics and bearskins, performing such ceremonial duties
as Trooping of the Colour and the Changing of the
Guard. That image shines brightly in tourist memories
and occupies a central place in our national identity.
What many have forgotten, at least until recent years,
is the part played by musicians as frontline soldiers.
They have sounded alarms and led troops into battle
for centuries. Musicians continue to serve in foreign
fields, as medical assistants in the case of members of
the Band of the Coldstream Guards, and are ever-ready
at home to deal with casualties of nuclear, biological
or chemical weapon attacks. Tours of duty to Iraq and
Afghanistan in the past decade have placed soldiers
known for their musical excellence in harm’s way.
In addition to their vital work in war zones, the
forty-nine members of the Band of the Coldstream
Guards have also toured extensively as ambassadors
for Britain overseas. They marched into the UK pop
chart last December with their debut release on
Decca. Heroes caught the collective pride, the ace
musicianship and irresistible verve of this ear- and
eye-catching band of brothers.
The Band of the Coldstream Guards appeared before
the microphones, or the recording horn as it then was,
for the first time in 1908, five years before the London
Symphony Orchestra cut its first disc. Their recording of
the regimental march, Millanolo, proved a hit with the
gramophone owners of Edwardian England. It launched
a career on record that has spanned everything from
albums of parade ground marches and appearances
with Dame Nellie Melba to concert pieces specially
written for the Coldstream Guards musicians.
It was General George Monck, one of the sharpest
political operators of seventeenth-century England and a
formidable soldier, who raised the Coldstream Regiment
in 1650 as part of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army.
General Monck later nailed his colours to the king’s mast
to support the restoration of Charles II in 1660. The
Coldstream Guards survived the nation’s transition from
republic to monarchy and stands today among the world’s
oldest military formations. The regiment’s musicians were
formerly constituted as a band on 16 May 1785, made
their first foreign trip to Paris shortly after the Battle
of Waterloo and helped secure the Entente cordiale
in 1907 with a famous return to the French capital. On
Sunday 18 June 1944, a German flying bomb struck the
Guards Chapel in Wellington barracks. The blast killed
120 people, including five members of the Band of the
Coldstream Guards and their Director of Music.
Today’s band rests on those deep historical footings
and on the accomplished talents of its present
musicians. “Heroes has given us an opportunity to
take music we’re proud of to a wider audience so they
can feel its great qualities,” notes Lieutenant Colonel
Graham Jones MBE, the regiment’s Director of Music.
“The way these pieces are written makes the most of
that big, epic sound. It’s inspirational and it’s stirring.
10
11

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE PRIESTS, NOMINATED FOR NS&I ALBUM OF THE YEAR
THE
PRIESTS
THE ALBUM HARMONY OUT NOW
INCLUDES SILENT NIGHT, THE LORD’S PRAYER & AMAZING GRACE
WWW.THEPRIESTS.COM

Rhydian
ClassicalBritsOsborne:Layout 1 27/04/2010 09:19 Page 1
Steven Osborne
RACHMANINOV
24 PRELUDES
nominated for the Critics’ Choice Award
The Classical BRITs 2010
Congratulations on your nomination for
Album of the Year
‘This has award-winner written all over it’ Gramophone
‘One of the piano discs of the year’ The Sunday Times
‘For a truly spellbinding modern account, Osborne now
holds the winning ticket’ International Record Review
Beethoven
PIANO SONATAS
Classic FM CD of the week
NEW RELEASE
www.hyperion-records.co.uk
www.camillakerslake.com
CDA67700
CDA67662
Only Men Aloud
They leapt into the national spotlight two
years ago with heartfelt performances
and a winning run in BBC1’s Last Choir
Standing competition. Only Men Aloud
certainly earned their name’s exclamation
mark thanks to full-blooded choral
arrangements of mighty power ballads,
chart hits and rousing hymns. The group
was created in Cardiff by Tim Rhys-Evans,
former associate chorus master at Welsh
National Opera, long-serving music
director of the company’s Welsh National
Youth Opera project and leader of the
WNO Community Choir. He convened
OMA! in 2000 as a thoroughly modern
take on the great Welsh male voice choir
tradition. Around sixty fine young singers
have formed the choir’s ranks since,
producing an alumni list that includes
members of the Glyndebourne Festival
and WNO choruses, West End leads
and pop performers. Only Men Aloud
presently comprises twenty members
whose ‘day jobs’ span everything from
pharmacist and call centre employee to
school head of music and cathedral clerk.
Besides harnessing the collective power
of their vocal cords, OMA! members have
raised the bar for choral choreography.
“I wanted to find a way of getting young
men interested in singing in choirs,”
explains Tim Rhys Evans. “I think young
men tend to relax in each other’s
company and something magical happen.
Only Men Aloud reflects my own eclectic
musical tastes from early chant to pop
songs and musical theatre, via opera,
sacred music, folk songs and twentiethcentury
male choir repertory.”
Providence made a propitious date with
the Roberts family of Sennybridge in
Powys, ensuring that their second son
was born on St Valentine’s Day. The infant
Rhydian began singing not so long after
he spoke his first words. He represented
his primary school and the ancient county
of Powys at the Urdd Gobaith Cymru
eisteddfod at the age of five and took part
in the famous youth movement’s sporting
and music competitions throughout his
schooldays and beyond. It was Rhydian’s
prowess on the rugby pitch and cricket
field that almost set the course for his
adult career. When he wasn’t handling the
oval ball or connecting leather with willow,
Rhydian could usually be found pumping
iron at his local gym. “My plan was to be
a professional player for the Swansea RFC
Ospreys,” he recalls. “From the age of
ten that was all I could think about – and I
wasn't interested in singing any more.”
A gym injury scuppered Rhydian’s
rugby-playing ambitions and led the teenager
to dedicate more time to music. He learned
to play trumpet, rediscovered his first love
for song and, after a gap year teaching in
South Africa, enrolled to study singing at the
Birmingham Conservatoire. His voice teachers
included fellow baritone Adrian Clarke and
Christine Cairns, one of the nation’s leading
mezzo-sopranos. During his second year at
music college, Rhydian beat thirteen other
singers to win the 2004 Kathleen Ferrier
Society Bursary for Young Singers, hailed by
the prestigious award’s jury as a ‘formidable
talent’. He built his stage experience
with roles such as Morales in the City of
Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s semistaged
performance of Bizet’s Carmen and in
Rossini’s The Italian girl in Algiers.
On completing his Birmingham course
in 2007, Rhydian received a first-class
honours degree. A conventional classical
career appeared to be the most obvious
route ahead. And yet the baritone was
determined to reach a crossover audience.
He struck gold when he auditioned for the
fourth series of The X Factor and continued
to the show’s final. “You have to take risks
in life,” notes Rhydian. They paid off in
the case of The X Factor, even though the
instantly memorable singer finished as
runner-up. Simon Cowell offered Rhydian
a deal to record for Sony BMG. Sales of
Rhydian sailed to 300,000 copies within a
month of its release and ensured that its
eponymous performer became the highest
selling chart newcomer in 2008. O Fortuna,
his second album, has sold 100,000 copies
since its release last November.
Rhydian joined the star-studded cast
assembled at the Royal Albert Hall last
month for Classic Response, raising
money to aid children orphaned by Haiti’s
earthquake. He’s set to tour later this year
in company with Jason Donovan and former
Atomic Kitten, Liz McClarnon, in Jeff Wayne’s
new musical, The War of the Worlds.
15

Camilla Kerslake
Countless camera lenses focused on Camilla the day Gary Barlow
introduced her as his new label’s debut signing. The Take That
star’s Future Records proudly hoisted its colours last November
with the release of Camilla Kerslake. Camilla’s self-titled album
would not have been made but for the twenty-one-year-old
soprano’s self-determination. She set out to catch Barlow’s
attention at the end of 2008 by sending him her demo recording.
It might have rested there but for the fact that, almost every
day for six weeks, Camilla travelled to the London studios where
Take That were recording and delivered another forty copies! Its
busy addressee’s interest was eventually piqued. The seasoned
performer listened and loved what he heard. Camilla’s demo
disc certainly hit the spot. “I was instantly captivated by it,”
Gary recalls. “Her voice is unique and a powerful instrument.”
What happened next surely surpassed Camilla’s grandest dreams. She
was offered a Future Records contract and spent last summer setting
down her first album’s melodious tracks. Producer Mike Hedges, whose
career credits include everything from working with The Cure and U2
to The Priests and The Zimmers, helped the singer feel at home in the
studio and brought out the young singer’s best. Before the finished
album reached the high street, her Italian language version of Take
That’s Rule the World became a YouTube hit and her debut single,
She moved through the fair, received the exuberant support of Sir
Terry Wogan and his BBC Radio 2 listeners. Camilla became the voice
of Christmas, or at least one of the most prominent among Yuletide
singers, after her account of How shall I keep from singing? was chosen
by Waitrose as the soundtrack for its 2009 seasonal ad campaign.
The Kerslake story began on 5 August 1988 in Dulwich, south London.
Camilla’s early years were spent in New Zealand, where her stepfather
was known as the antipodean nation’s top pie-maker. Classical music
played a key part in her schooling in an Auckland suburb. “I was
a junior cheerleader and played rugby and cricket,” she recalls. “I
loved it there. One day my mother went in for parents' day and the
teacher said, ‘Most children come in singing nursery rhymes but your
daughter sings opera.’ Mum's more of a Celine Dion fan but when she
was pregnant with me, all she wanted to do was to listen to classical
music.” Camilla’s pre-natal exposure to the classics bore fruit after
her family returned to Britain. She excelled in music at school. A
Chanel bag, bought for a song and sold on eBay for serious money,
enabled Camilla to fund classical singing lessons and underwrite her
studies at Guildford’s Academy of Contemporary Music. And now
she’s mixing with the music industry’s great and good. Little wonder
that the diva agrees that meeting Gary Barlow changed her life.
Blake
Facebook brought Blake
together in September 2007
when two friends teamed
up with two other singers to
establish a distinctive classical
crossover quartet. They hatched
a set of cool close harmony
arrangements in rehearsal and
tested their version of Moon
River on fellow guests at a house
party. The audience reaction
encouraged the lads to develop
their creation, a process again
aided by Facebook’s networking
power. Daniel Glatman,
responsible for the Fron Male
Voice Choir’s chart-topping
arrangements, responded to the
quartet’s message and agreed
to become their manager. They
landed a contract to record for
Universal Classics within months
of first performing in quartet
formation. Their collective name
grew out of a shared passion for
the work of the visionary poet
and artist, William Blake, whose
250th anniversary fell in the
year of the new group’s birth.
Fortune smiled on Blake when
they sang Sweet Chariot to 65,000
fans as a sinew-stiffening, spinestraightening
prelude to England’s
Rugby World Cup warm-up match
with France at Twickenham in
August 2007. Their version of the
spiritual was chosen as the official
anthem for England’s World Cup
campaign. Other sporting fixtures
supplied Blake with early stages,
experience and exposure, as did
dates as support artists to Katherine
Jenkins on her 2008 UK megatour.
Their eponymous debut
album, released in November
2007, delivered Blake’s elegant
brand of music-making to a new
audience, topping the classical
chart and reaching Number 20 in
the pop album chart. It also topped
the public vote for Album of the
Year at the 2008 Classical BRITs.
And so it goes, Blake’s second
studio album, proved a hit at home
and in Australia, where it topped
the classical album chart. They
made news last October with the
release of Together, issued as a
joint venture enterprise developed
by the ensemble in partnership
with composer Adrian Munsey
and Classical BRIT award-winning
producer Nick Patrick. Together
includes arrangements of classical
favourites, 'I vow to thee, my
country' and 'Nessun dorma!' and
Ennio Morricone’s La califfa among
them. “It’s exciting that this is a
new approach to bringing classical
crossover to life,” notes Nick Patrick.
“We’re delighted to be working
with Blake in this way. We have a
record that people have responded
to emotionally and that’s about
Blake’s most powerful connection
with their audience.”
Blake were recently appointed
ambassadors to the World Wildlife
Fund and their song Beautiful
Earth was chosen as the WWF’s
2010 UK anthem. Beautiful
Earth became the soundtrack
to Earth Hour on 27 March, the
moment when millions around
the globe switched off their
lights for an hour. Blake’s music
accompanied Earth Hour’s
global promotional campaign,
introducing their work to new
audiences from Pole to Pole.
Howard Goodall
Like Pixie Lott and H.G. Wells, Howard was born in Bromley. He
moved with his family at an early age to Rutland and then to Thame,
before passing the audition to join the Choir of New College,
Oxford, at the age of eight. Howard later became a pupil at Stowe
School, which provided him with unlimited access to the chapel
organ, and to Lord Williams’ School in Thame, which gave him the
chance to explore just about every musical genre under the sun.
He gained a place to read music at Oxford’s Christ Church College,
where he secured a first-class degree and enduring friendships with
fellow students Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis. Howard’s early
credits as a composer included supplying music for Atkinson’s revue
shows, Beyond a joke among them, and weekly songs for BBC2’s Not
the nine o’clock news. The composer’s mellifluous setting of Psalm 23,
conceived as The Vicar of Dibley’s theme music, has become a modern
choral classic, while Eternal Light – A Requiem, was created to mark
the ninetieth anniversary of the First World War’s end in 2008.
In addition to composing for stage, screen and concert hall, Howard
is widely known as a broadcaster, television presenter and tireless
champion of live music-making and music education. His weekly
show for Classic FM and status as the radio station’s composer-inresidence
have enhanced his profile and popularity. The recording
of Howard’s latest Classic FM composition, Pelican in the wilderness,
was released earlier this week and is set to follow the chart-topping
trajectory of his Enchanted Voices and Enchanted Carols albums.
Enchanted Voices
There’s no room for false modesty where Britain’s great
choral singing tradition is concerned. Quite simply, it ranks
among the nation’s most extraordinary achievements. The
point becomes clear as soon as you hear Enchanted Voices
at work and clearer still when you look at the biographies of
its individual members. The ensemble’s young sopranos, in
addition to owning increasingly busy solo careers, have worked
with such outstanding professional groups as the Gabrieli
Consort, Stile Antico, Tenebrae and the Monteverdi Choir.
They were natural choices to give life to Howard Goodall’s
Enchanted Voices composition, singers blessed with crystal
clear tone, refined musicianship and immaculate intonation.
Howard’s own musical outlook was shaped in part by his childhood
experiences as a chorister at Oxford’s New College. The multitalented
musician returned to the city of dreaming spires as
an undergraduate student at Christ Church, where he worked
closely with its acclaimed choir. Those early experiences informed
Howard’s Enchanted Voices soundworld and helped define the
tonal qualities that he wanted from the work’s eponymous choral
creators. Their first Enchanted Voices album won a Classic FM
Gramophone Award last autumn and topped the specialist classical
chart for twenty-three weeks following its release in March 2009.
16
17

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR NOMINEES AND PERFORMERS AT THE CLASSICAL BRITs 2010
FROM
www.decca.com
2010

LIVE AT THE BRITs
Featuring - André Rieu,
Alison Balsom, Natasha Marsh,
Russell Watson and Hayley Westenra
Pocketful
of Sunshine
When bad things happen to good
people, the people of the world reach
into their pockets to help. When
disaster strikes, we all band together.
The music industry has always been
quick to mobilise, generous in time and
spirit, and powerful enough to make a
real difference. Musicians don’t have all
the answers and few would know what
to do to save a life. But musicians know
how to love, and they know how to use
their fame and talent to raise money -
lots of money. Ladies and gentlemen,
raising money is what we at The BRITs
are doing tonight.
Since the earthquake in Haiti, pleas for cash
have come in thick and fast. There’s a reason
for that. We need to raise a lot of money. We
need to raise as much cash as we can, fast. In
recognition of the magnitude of the situation
in Haiti, The BRIT Trust confirms it will make a
special contribution to the disasters relief fund
and the Classical BRITs is especially delighted
that the ‘Classical Relief for Haiti’ single will
feature in this year’s Mail on Sunday CD (out
Sunday 16th May). The more people get to
hear this amazing track will surely bring those
heartstrings back to the forefront of our minds.
Haiti, of course, deserves a remarkable effort
from everyone. But life, and giving, must also
continue elsewhere. When disaster strikes,
people often redirect their efforts, but this
can leave deserving causes elsewhere with
a shortfall in funding. In 2010, the Classical
BRITs will continue to fulfil a long and happy
obligation to support its main beneficiaries,
the BRIT School and Nordoff Robbins Music
Therapy. It will also continue its commitment to
a raft of one-off grants to support grass roots
Since its inception, the BRIT Trust has raised
over £14m, of which an amazing £11.2m are the
proceeds of The BRIT Awards themselves.
The Chairman of the BRIT Trust and the man
with the difficult job of dishing out funding
is John Craig OBE. He explains: “With our
mission to ‘support young people in music
and education’ we are delighted so many
worthy causes benefit”.
“The BRIT Awards generosity grows every year
with the Haiti campaign being included among
the Classical BRIT Awards' beneficiaries. Good
luck with the show - and thank you.
The BRIT Trust is proud to support a
host of grass roots community projects.
Past beneficiary groups include:
Access To Music • Arts & Kids/London
Sinfonietta • Avenues Youth Project • Black Arts
Alliance • Blackheath Halls • Blantyre Music
Project, Glasgow • British Performing Arts,
Medicine Trust • Canford Summer School •
Charterhouse in Southwark • Chicken Shed •
Community Music • Commission for Racial
Equality • Community Music East • Drugscope •
Global Rock Challenge • Heart’n’Soul •
Heathfield Community College • Irene Taylor
Trust (Music in Prisons) • Lenton Community
Association • LIPA • Making Music • Mencap •
Music & Sound Experience, Wales • Music
and the Deaf • Musicians’ Benevolent Fund •
Musicians In Focus • Musicians Union • National
Foundation for Youth Music • National Music
Day • Pimlico School • Portishead Youth •
Princes’ Trust • Raphael Walters • Release •
Rock School • Roundhouse Trust • Royal
Commonwealth Society • Save The Children •
St David’s Hall, Cardiff • St Luke’s School •
Terrence Higgins Trust • Tim Macbeth Two
Moors Festival • Dame Vera Lynn Trust • West
Lothian College • Young Persons Concert
Foundation • Youth Music Theatre UK
Download your memento
from the evening - Howard
Goodall, Enchanted Voices,
Blake and Camilla Kerslake's
unique 2010 track of the
famous 'Nessun dorma!'.
To pre-order before the
18 May television broadcast
go to iTunes. From 18 May,
the single will be available
to download from all
online UK retailers.
Clap your hands. Tap your feet. Dance or
stomp. Shout or cry. We all react to music
in different ways. But we all react. Nordoff
Robbins practitioners use the universal power
of music to enrich the lives of children and
adults who, through illness, disability, or
trauma, are isolated, experiencing difficulty in
communicating emotions and desires.
The music therapy techniques pioneered by
Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins fifty years ago
are now considered best practice worldwide.
From their London base and outreach centres,
the charity runs education and research
programmes, as well as a raft of music-based
community and health projects.
In the UK, Nordoff Robbins practitioners
work alongside the NHS but receive no
public funding. This invaluable charity is
entirely reliant on voluntary donations to train
tomorrow’s practitioners and deliver forty
thousand therapy sessions each year. The
BRIT Trust is its biggest individual sponsor,
but private donations are very welcome.
nordoff-robbins.org.uk
and community organisations elsewhere.
brittrust.co.uk
21

Rolando Villazón
We’ve seen him on the Andrew Marr Show sofa, rubbing
shoulders with politicians and cultural commentators.
He reached an audience of millions as a member of
the Popstar to Operastar jury and was subsequently
immortalised as a ‘knitted character’ on Harry Hill’s TV
Burp. And he made a triumphant return to the stage in
March, prompting a standing ovation from the audience
at the Vienna State Opera. It’s been a remarkable year
already for Roland Villazón. His summer diary includes
important dates at Zurich Opera, the state operas
of Berlin and Bavaria, and the Verbier Festival.
Born in Mexico City in 1972, young Rolando revealed a
childhood passion for contemporary dance, classical ballet
and acting. He enrolled at the prestigious Espacios performing
arts academy as an eager eleven-year old, polishing his
terpsichorean skills over the next decade. Veteran baritone
Arturo Nieto discovered Rolando’s singing voice in 1990 and
nurtured its development. Those lessons opened the door
to a place at the National Conservatory of Music, a string of
competition wins and, in 1998, membership of Pittsburgh
Opera’s Young Artists Program. He could have become a priest
or a history teacher if matters vocal had not worked out. But the
operatic cosmic order responded sympathetically to the young
tenor’s impassioned singing, rewarding Rolando with second
prize at Plácido Domingo’s Operalia competition in 1999
and a series of ear-catching debuts across Europe.
Rolando underlined his star quality a decade ago
when he substituted for an indisposed colleague
at a moment’s notice as Alfredo in Verdi’s La
traviata at the Opéra Bastille in Paris. His
career since, ignited with a spark of individual
artistry and sustained by sheer vocal
brilliance, has refreshed the ears of
jaded critics and excited casting
directors at the world’s top opera
houses. His second solo album,
of French opera arias, scooped
a Grammy nomination and a
Gramophone Award in 2005,
while his Salzburg Festival
recording for Deutsche
Grammophon of Traviata,
in company with Anna
Netrebko, set benchmark
standards. Ill health twice
intervened to check the
tenor’s career. But a successful
operation last year to remove
a cyst on his vocal cords paved
the way for Rolando’s return to
the world’s top opera stages.
Romantic opera arias, Broadway
hits and timeless songs supplied
the heart of Rolando’s most
recent release, Tenor has held
a place in the classical album
chart’s Top 10 since its appearance
in February. Its success speaks
volumes for the singer’s popularity
and charismatic artistry. Villazón’s
vision for the future presents a
world in which opera and classical
music are claimed by the many and
enjoyed by all. “There are a lot of
people who do not go to the opera
because they think you need to
have special knowledge for that,”
observes Rolando. “I believe that
you need a heart and sensibility,
and everybody has that.”
Angela Gheorghiu
When she sang Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata at the Metropolitan
Opera in March, the New York Post described Angela’s
performance as “a searing reminder of why we go to opera in the
first place”. The diva has been serving notice of opera’s dramatic
and musical powers for the best part of two decades, her star
shining as brightly today as it did when her Violetta proved an
international sensation at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in
the early 1990s. Born in the small Romanian town of Adjud, Angela
and her younger sister shared a passion for singing and grand
opera that led both to study at the Bucharest Academy of Music.
Lessons with the inspirational teacher Mia Barbu provided the young
soprano with far more than firm foundations for her impeccable
technique and fine musicianship. “She was everything to me,”
Angela recalls. “She gave me the most precious advice. No matter the
situation I’m in, I always think of what Mia Barbu would have said.”
Confidence, determination and a desire to be the best flowed from the
experience of those early lessons, as did Angela’s growing awareness
of the operatic art of communication. During the final decade of
Nicolae Ceausescu’s despotic rule, Angela devoted countless hours
to practice and visited the concert hall or opera house almost every
evening. The dictator’s downfall at the end of 1989 brought new
freedoms to Romania and created the conditions for the country’s
most exciting young singer to launch her international career.
She first appeared at the Royal Opera House in 1992 as Zerlina
in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and scored her Covent Garden Traviata
triumph two years later. Angela’s career has since taken her to
the earth’s four corners and to its most prestigious opera houses,
concert halls and music festivals. Her recordings for Decca and
EMI Classics, meanwhile, have consistently attracted critical praise
and an array of awards and award nominations. The soprano has
won two Gramophone Awards, in 2001 and again last year, for her
respective title-role contributions to Massenet’s Manon and Puccini’s
Madama Butterfly, both issued on the EMI Classics label. She was
named Female Artist of the Year at the Classical BRITs in 2001 and
delighted the Royal Albert Hall audience on the occasion with a
spine-tingling performance of ‘Casta diva’ from Bellini’s Norma.
Angela is set to return to the Royal Opera House again in July for
the revival of Sir Richard Eyre’s celebrated production of La traviata.
She travels to Madrid’s Teatro Real at the month’s end for three
performances as Amelia in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra in company with
Plácido Domingo before rejoining the Royal Opera in September for its
tour to Japan. She’s back at Covent Garden in November for the Royal
Opera’s first production of Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur since 1906.
Now if that’s not a hot ticket date, we don’t know what is!
There’ll be dancing in the streets of South Kensington tonight.
It’s a natural condition inspired by the work of the world’s second
Waltz King. André Rieu inherited the title from Johann Strauss II,
the composer whose music he has championed since his student
years at the Music Academy in Brussels. The great British public
connected with André’s elegant musicianship last December
when he appeared at the Royal Variety Show. The subsequent
release of Forever Vienna triggered Rieu fever, propelling the
artist’s album to second place in the pop chart and unparalleled
dominance of the classical and specialist classical charts.
André became the fastest-breaking artist in the UK this year in any
genre, begetter of the first album to register platinum sales in 2010
and owner of countless new fans. The violinist and his Johann Strauss
Orchestra are no strangers to the pop charts or vast audiences.
Their albums have sold by the container load in the Netherlands,
Austria, Germany, Ireland, North America and Australia. The strains
of Forever Vienna clearly resonated with millions of British listeners,
whose passion for the album delivered The Blue Danube, The
Radetzky March and Vienna Blood to the 21st-century hit parade.
The man from Maastricht was born on 1 October 1949, eponymous
son of the conductor of his home city’s symphony orchestra. André’s
father was busy conducting Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on the
Julia Lezhneva
Born in December 1989 in Russia’s far east,
on the Pacific island of Sakhalin, Julia began
piano lessons at the age of five. She was
encouraged by her geophysicist parents to
study music and develop her evident talents
as a singer. Julia’s formal training continued
at the Gretchaninov Music School, from which
she graduated with distinction in 2004, and
at the prestigious Tchaikovsky Moscow State
Conservatory, where she gained an honours
degree in vocal studies and a diploma in
piano. Her seductive, searing performance of
Rossini’s ‘Riedi al soglio’ from Zelmira scooped
the Grand Prix at the sixth international E.V.
Obraztsova opera competition in the Grand
Hall of the St Petersburg Philharmonic.
News of the seventeen-year old’s bel canto
qualities, technical command and charming
stage presence soon reached ears beyond the
walls of the competition’s illustrious venue.
André Rieu
evening his lad entered the world, an auspicious sign that music was
to be his birthright. André began violin lessons at the age of five and
continued his studies in Liege and the Conservatorium Maastricht. The
great Dutch violinist Herman Krebbers, leader of Amsterdam’s mighty
Concertgebouw Orchestra and an internationally acclaimed soloist, helped
nurture young André’s talents, as did André Gertler, a close friend of
Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. The audience reaction to his student
performance of Lehár’s Gold and Silver waltz directed André towards the
dance music of Old Vienna. He founded the Maastricht Salon Orchestra
during his time as a violinist with the Limburg Symphony Orchestra.
In 1987, André established the Johann Strauss Orchestra and a related
production company. It proved an inspired move. The André Rieu
phenomenon sky-rocketed over the next decade, energised by bold
performances and encouraged by the public’s appetite for waltzes,
polkas, marches and popular dances from a more glamorous age. His
world tours and television specials draw huge audiences: over 38,000
crowded to hear his November 2008 concert with the Johann Strauss
Orchestra at Melbourne’s Telstra Dome! This month and next, the fans
will be out in force to hear Rieu and friends at work in South Africa.
“To me, music is one of the most important things,” comments André.
“A life without music would be unbearable.” That’s why the violinist’s
diary is filled with concert and recording dates for years to come!
Julia’s professional solo debut in Mozart’s
Requiem with the Moscow Virtuosi reinforced
critical impressions of a young artist clearly
destined for a major international career.
The lyric soprano travelled to Wales in
September 2008 to study with tenor Dennis
O’Neill at his International Academy of Voice
at Cardiff University. She has also attended
masterclasses with Elena Obraztsova, widely
regarded among the finest of all Russian
opera singers, and the conductor Alberto
Zedda at the Accademia Rossiniana in
Pesaro. Julia has performed with Peruvian
tenor Juan Diego Flórez and the soprano
solos for Marc Minkowski in his recent
recording of Bach’s Mass in B minor. She
made her UK debut last year with the Royal
Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and
Vasily Petrenko, garnering rave reviews
for interpretations of three Rossini arias.
22
23

Nominations Launch
Monday 12th April, 5.30pm, The May Fair Hotel
Above: Danielle de Niese
with two Musicians from the
Band of the Coldstream Guards.
Right, from top down:
Jack Liebeck, Amaury Vassili,
Simon Boswell, Hayley Westenra,
Only Men Aloud and Quatuor Ebène.
Photo: jmenternational.com
This year’s Classical BRIT Awards were
launched into the world with a rousing
blast of trumpets. Two musicians from the
Band of the Coldstream Guards, standing
proud in their scarlet uniforms, called the
assembled company to attention with the
premiere of the NS&I Fanfare, specially
written for the occasion by their regiment’s
director of music, Lieutenant Colonel
Graham Jones. The May Fair Hotel’s Crystal
Ballroom echoed to sounding brass and the
chime of champagne flutes, a combination
ideally suited to the unveiling of one of
classical music’s most glamorous events.
It was reassuring to have a squad of Coldstream
Guards in the room. Their presence offered
formidable protection for the diamonds and
other precious stones to be seen adorning a
host of celebrities, none more valuable than
those worn by the evening’s co-presenter,
Danielle de Niese, opera’s coolest soprano by
a country mile. The American artist began her
public career in 1988, becoming the youngest
ever winner of Australia’s Young Talent Time
telly show at the age of nine. Two years later
she won an Emmy Award as guest host of
L.A. Kids in Los Angeles, went on to appear
alongside Anthony Hopkins in Hannibal,
made her international breakthrough on
the opera stage at the 2005 Glyndebourne
Festival and proved an instant pop hit earlier
this year when she appeared with Mika on
ITV1’s Popstar to Operastar.
Although our launch bash post-dated her
birthday by twenty-four hours, Danni was clearly
still in the mood to party. “I’m thrilled to be
here today to announce the nominations for the
2010 Classical BRIT Awards,” she said. “This
year marks the start of the second decade of
The Classical BRITs. Over the past ten years,
the show has delivered the biggest and the
best in classical music to a worldwide television
audience. It has attracted the world’s great
and most talented artists, and has provided
a valuable platform for classical performers
across the globe. I can say that as a classical
artist myself it was a great honour to perform at
The Classical BRITs in 2008, to be nominated in
2009 and to be with you all this evening.”
Before looking to the present, Danielle turned
to Classical BRITs past and introduced a
showreel of great moments from the show’s
archives. The first instalment in 2000 set the
bar high for subsequent editions to top, with
Nigel Kennedy and Lesley Garrett among
the inaugural line-up of performers. The
video of Classical BRIT highlights reinforced
the event’s celebration of great classical
artists and outstanding young talent. Clips
of performances by Sir Simon Rattle, Nigel
Kennedy, Lang Lang, José Carreras, Jonas
Kaufmann, Anna Netrebko, Alison Balsom,
Plácido Domingo, Angela Gheorghiu, Bryn
Terfel, Andrea Bocelli, Renée Fleming,
Rolando Villazón, Sting and Nicola Benedetti
sounded a potent reminder of the show’s
many magnificent moments.
The divine Ms de Niese introduced two
fabulous showcase performances by young
artists, announced the nominations for this
year’s awards and gave a sensational, seductive
performance of ‘Da tempeste il legno infrante’
from Handel’s opera Giulio Cesare. And she
also brought those guests still engrossed in
the best of Classical BRIT hospitality to order:
“If I could just ask the naughty crowd over
there at the back to pay attention!” Her words
were their command! It was left to Tim Mack,
head of marketing and communications at
NS&I, and Classic FM’s Simon Bates to unveil
the ten recordings in the frame for this year’s
NS&I Album of the Year. “We’re delighted
to sponsor The Classical BRIT Awards for
the seventh year,” Tim declared. “We have
also supported the Classic FM Morning
Show since 2002, during which time our
association with classical music and that of
many of our customers has grown steadily.”
Classical BRIT Co-Chairmen, Mark Wilkinson
and Barry McCann, set the evening’s formal
proceedings running with words of welcome
and a reminder of the scale and scope of the
classical recording business. “There were over
2,500 new classical albums released in the UK
last year by over ninety record companies, from
major companies to nimble independents, all
operating in the classical space,” said Mark.
“Whether it’s new artists, new music, household
names or imaginative reissues, the classical
market remains buoyant and competitive.
While today we celebrate last year’s albums,
it’s important to mention the very strong start
to this year so far. The classical album market is
now up an incredible 43% year on year, while
digital sales have shown growth of almost
50%.” He noted the strength of present
media support for classical music, from
Classic FM to the daily press, and the massive
television audience for Popstar to Operastar.
The Classical BRIT Awards, said Barry McCann,
continues to offer a platform for developing
young artists from home and abroad. His
point was underlined fourfold by the Quatour
Ebene, a quartet of Gramophone Awardwinning
young French string players, who
captivated the May Fair Hotel launch crowd
with their version of Miserlou (aka the theme
music to Pulp Fiction). Their élan and energy
were matched by the work of Young Artist of
the Year nominee, Jack Liebeck. The 30-yearold
violinist’s 1785 Guadagnini instrument and
his delicately etched performance of Tarrega's
Recuerdos de la Alhambra held the audience
spellbound. Our glittering launch party, it has
to be said, cast the most auspicious omens for
this evening’s main event.
24 25

Male Artist of The Year
Female Artist of The Year
Introduced by Myleene Klass,
presenter of Classic FM’s weekend breakfast
show, Saturday and Sunday from 7am.
Anyone in search of an ideal snapshot of musicmaking
in Britain today should train the lens on
our nominees for Male Artist of the Year. Their
contributions to classical music in this country
deserve the highest recognition. Antonio
Pappano, who arrived in post at the Royal Opera
not long after its famous Covent Garden home’s
refurbishment, has played a key role in broadening
the company’s audience and underpinning its
global reputation. His younger colleague, Vasily
Petrenko, has worked comparable wonders on
Merseyside with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
Orchestra. The Russian musician is also on a
mission to inspire members of his latest band, the
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Inspiring
others has occupied a central position in Bryn
Terfel’s tally of achievements since his breakthrough
appearance twenty-one years ago in the final of
the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. We
thrilled to his take on opera’s Bad Boys last year
and can’t wait to hear his latest interpretation
of Hans Sachs, one of the most demanding and
compelling of all Wagner roles.
Each of tonight’s nominees has already won this
coveted Classical BRIT title, a sign of their high
status in the world of classical music and tribute
to their majestic artistry. Angela Gheorghiu made
her international debut at the Royal Opera House
in 1992, soared to stardom there two years later
in La traviata and has been a firm favourite with
British audiences ever since. The Royal Opera also
occupies a prominent place in the Anna Netrebko
story. Her performances there of Natasha in
Prokofiev’s monumental War and Peace and
of Mozart’s Donna Anna marked major milestones
in the singer’s early career, while her appearance
in last season’s staging of I Capuleti e i Montecchi
attracted rave reviews and wild applause. Marin
Alsop’s contributions to British music alone merit
a special prize. The Royal Philharmonic Society
presented her with its Conductor’s Award in 2005,
while Musical America named Marin as Conductor
of the Year in 2009. Will the conductor win again?
Or will 2010 be the year of the soprano?
Introduced by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen,
presenter of Classic FM’s Sunday Spa,
Sunday from 9am.
Antonio Pappano
Bryn Terfel
Vasily Petrenko
Angela Gheorghiu
Anna Netrebko
Marin Alsop
Puccini/Madama Butterfly;
Verdi/Messa da Requiem
EMI Classics
Born in Epping to Italian parents, young Tony
Pappano was raised in central London before
moving with his family to Connecticut. He cut
his teeth playing piano for his father’s Pimlico
singing classes, earned pocket money as a
high school student with sessions as cocktail
bar pianist and went on to accompany
Connecticut Grand Opera rehearsals. The
rich mix of cultures, continents and contacts
helped shape the young musician’s formative
experiences. He later worked as accompanist
and assistant conductor at the Bayreuth
Festival, where Wagner’s music seeped naturally
into his Italianate bloodstream. His apprentice
years, including a magnificent spell as chief
conductor of La Monnaie in Brussels led to
his appointment in 2001 as music director of
the Royal Opera. Covent Garden’s Pappano
years count among the most successful in the
company’s illustrious history. The conductor has
also achieved mighty things as music director
of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale
di Santa Cecilia, breathing fresh life into the
venerable Roman institution.
pappanoverdi.com
Bad Boys
Deutsche Grammophon
He’s been described as ‘a force of nature’,
‘a born communicator who loves words
as much as music’, and as ‘the biggest
and most dramatic opera figure of his
generation’. The critical verdict only partly
explains why Bryn connects so deeply with
audiences from all backgrounds. The Welsh
bass-baritone’s personality, firmly rooted in
family and home, has not been spoiled by
fame. Hymns and arias belong to the man’s
stock in trade; airs and graces are notably
absent from Bryn’s public and private
persona. His sporting passions – for Wales
on the rugby pitch, Manchester United in
the round ball game – count as close rivals
to his lifelong love for song. The greatest
sporting stars would surely relate to the
astonishing commitment, the mental focus
and enormous work of preparation that go
into every Terfel performance. Expect an
abundance of those qualities next month
when Bryn makes his role debut as Hans
Sachs in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger at
Welsh National Opera.
brynterfel.net
Shostakovich/Symphonies
Nos. 11 and 5 & 9
Naxos
Tavener/Requiem
EMI Classics
News of a Russian revolution broke in
Liverpool with the announcement of Vasily
Petrenko’s appointment to the city’s venerable
symphony orchestra. The Royal Liverpool
Philharmonic Orchestra was not in the finest
artistic or financial health at the time. Its
youngest-ever principal conductor, only thirty
when he launched his first season in charge
in September 2006, proved an instant hit
with players and public alike. But could the
toweringly tall talent from St Petersburg change
the fortunes of a band that had lost its way?
Yes, he could and did! Petrenko’s initial threeyear
contract has been extended to 2015,
a storming result for a Liverpool team now
riding high on critical acclaim and audience
enthusiasm. Vasily’s RPLO career began with
the dramatic symphonic soundscapes of
Shostakovich and the infinite subtleties of
Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. Their Naxos
disc of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony was
named orchestral album of the year at the 2009
Gramophone Awards. Other prizes are certain
to come the young maestro’s way.
Puccini/Madama Butterfly
EMI Classics
When a new recording of a great opera is
compared favourably with the finest in the
catalogue, purists often reach for the snuff
box and take a pinch. Angela Gheorghiu’s
sensational title-role performance as the
doomed Madam Butterfly helped win an
army of zealous converts to one of the
most admired classical releases of 2009.
The Romanian soprano’s interpretation of
Puccini’s tragic heroine was judged by the
critics and duly set in company with those
essayed on disc by such legendary artists as
Renata Tebaldi, Victoria de los Angeles and
Mirella Freni. La Gheorghiu, feted as ‘the
world’s most glamorous opera star’, wowed
audiences at New York’s Metropolitan Opera
earlier this year with one of her signature
roles, Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata, and is set
to sing the work again at the Royal Opera
House, Covent Garden in July. Angela was
last named Female Artist of the Year at the
Classical BRITs nine years ago. Will she
triumph again tonight?
angelagheorghiu.com
Bellini/I Capuleti e i Montecchi
Deutsche Grammophon
From her origins in Russia’s Kuban region
by way of a cleaning job backstage at St
Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre and a string
of sensational debuts, Anna Netrebko has
risen to secure global superstardom on
the world’s foremost operatic stages. She
was recently named among the World
Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders,
alongside Stella McCartney, Roger Federer,
Alain de Botton and around 300 other
‘extraordinary individuals’. Anna prefaced
her run as Puccini’s Mimì at the Metropolitan
Opera in February with a trip to Baden-
Baden to present President Angela Merkel
with the prestigious German Media Prize.
Small wonder the soprano is recognised far
beyond the red plush seats of the opera
house. Classical BRIT fans will already know
of Anna’s power to communicate, charm,
dazzle and inspire. Her duet with Andrea
Bocelli at the 2008 show commanded a
standing ovation from the Royal Albert
Hall audience. Another is sure to follow
next month when she takes the title-role in
Massenet’s Manon at Covent Garden.
annanetrebko.com
Bernstein/Mass
Naxos
As the daughter of professional musicians,
Marin Alsop was always destined to cultivate
her prodigious musical talents. Rapid
progress on violin and piano propelled Marin
to studies at the prestigious Juilliard School
of Music in her native New York City. But it
was her childhood experience of watching
Leonard Bernstein conduct and subsequent
lessons with the inimitable American maestro
that inspired Marin to become a conductor.
The Alsop career biography includes a
fruitful relationship as music director of
the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
Marin made headline news in 2007 when
she became the first woman to head a
major American orchestra. Her Baltimore
Symphony contract was recently extended
to 2015, while her commitments elsewhere
include duties as artistic director of The
Bernstein Project, the Southbank Centre’s
ongoing tribute to the work of her mentor.
“Preparing to conduct any piece is all about
opening a secret door to the music - finding
a magic key,” she notes. “That, ultimately, is
what I'm looking for.”
marinalsop.com
Verdi, Requiem – a revelatory
new reading of Verdi’s
sacred masterpiece, by turns
contemplative and cataclysmic,
shaped and inspired by Antonio
Pappano’s visionary leadership.
(EMI Classics 6 98936 2 [2CD])
Bad Boys – a rogue’s gallery of
opera’s usual suspects are joined
in Bryn’s recital album by Sweeney
Todd and Mack the Knife, each
characterised with dark-hearted
villainy and menace.
Shostakovich,
Symphony No.11 – warn the
neighbours before unleashing
this searing performance of
Shostakovich’s reflections on
the 1905 Revolution, a standout
release from Vasily Petrenko and
his Liverpool forces.
Puccini, Madama Butterfly –
Angela Gheorghiu’s expressive
range, intelligent artistry and
heartbreaking love duet with
Jonas Kaufmann head the list of
outstanding qualities owned by
this irresistible Butterfly.
(EMI Classics 2 64187 2 [2CD])
I Capuleti e i Montecchi – the
glory of Bellini’s melodies and the
drama of his ‘lyric tragedy’ register
fully thanks not least to Anna
Netrebko’s star performance.
(Deutsche Grammophon 00289
477 8031 [2CD])
Bernstein, Mass – Bernstein’s
take on the Latin Mass, a
controversial product of the
early 1970s, emerges as a
20th-century masterpiece in
Marin Alsop’s Grammy Awardnominated
recording.
(Naxos 8.559622-23 [2CD])
26
27

NS&I Album
of the Year
Sacred chants, hymns of praise and settings
of holy words furnish a high percentage of
the tracks contained on the shortlist for this
year’s NS&I Album of the Year title. Call it a
sign of the times; call it a coincidence. But the
spiritual dimension surfaces in everything from
Pope Benedict’s Alma Mater – a ‘concept’
album backed by 2000 years of thought – to
Camilla Kerslake’s uplifting performance of
‘How can I keep from singing?’ The Priests and
Howard Goodall’s Enchanted Voices reflect on
song’s power to soothe savage breasts and its
divine ability to direct thoughts away from the
individual towards the many. For all that, there’s
no want of solo virtuosity or display from this
year’s list of artists. Faryl Smith turns in uncannily
mature performances for one so young; Rhydian
unleashes mighty waves of sound in O Fortuna,
and the Band of the Coldstream Guards remind
us of music’s role in time of war. It’s the public
vote that counts when it comes to electing the
Album of the Year. What will the poll deliver
this time round? All we know for sure is that the
ballot will be decisive!
NS&I Album of the Year Nominees are the
top ten selling recordings of 2009 in the
UK Official Charts Company Classical Chart.
Alma Mater – Music from the Vatican
Featuring the voice of
Pope Benedict XVI
Geffen
Most solo artists would consider themselves
blessed if their debut albums touched an
audience of thousands. The lead vocalist for
Alma Mater came to the microphones with
a fan-base of a billion souls and one of the
planet’s highest recognition quotients. Pope
Benedict XVI turned to ancient chants of the
Catholic Church, tunes crafted in the first
Christian millennium to honour and glorify the
Virgin Mary. Composers Simon Boswell and
Stephano Mainetti fashioned modern settings
for those timeless melodies, uniting the Holy
Father’s baritone with the Vatican choir and the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Alma Mater’s
beguiling A&R mix guaranteed its place atop
the Christmas classical album chart.
Together
Blake
Blake Music
Close harmony stands as a neat description
of what the boys from Blake do and as an
emblem for their winning partnership. The
male-voice quartet’s third album crosses a
multitude of musical boundaries to reach
everything from Puccini’s ‘Nessun dorma!’
and Abide with me to Bridge over troubled
water and Morricone’s La califfa. Together
echoes the qualities that propelled Blake’s
eponymous debut disc to the NS&I Album
of the Year title in 2007. Their recent work as
ambassadors for the World Wildlife Fund’s
Earth Hour and Together’s related reissue
should serve the group’s cause with Classical
BRIT voters. Can the ‘Classical Fab Four’
take the top prize again?
blakeofficial.com
Faryl
Faryl
Decca
Faryl sold over 29,000 copies within a week
of release, making it the fastest-selling debut
disc for any UK classical solo artist. Fourth
place in the combined album chart ensured
that Faryl Smith, four months short of her
fourteenth birthday at the time, became the
youngest British performer to score a Top 10
hit. The teenage sensation opened the show
at last year’s Classical BRITs. Her stylishly
elegant performance of Strauss’s eternally
popular Blue Danube Waltz spotlighted the
prodigious mezzo-soprano’s star qualities
and underlined the musical potential that
took her to the final of Britain’s Got Talent.
Will she become the youngest Album of the
Year winner? Don’t bet against it!
farylmusic.com
Voices of the Valley – Memory Lane
The Fron Male Voice Choir
Decca
Choral singing brings people together. It’s a
vital fact of life for the lads of the Côr Meibion
Froncysyllte, known to millions today as the
Fron Male Voice Choir. Their fourth Decca
album recalls a land of lost content, that
half-imagined world of happier times past,
fondly remembered friends, sunshine days and
triumph over adversity. Memory Lane paired
Fron’s finest with the unmistakeable voice of
Dame Vera Lynn to mine the nostalgic seam
stored within ‘We’ll meet again’. The Welsh
choristers also tugged heartstrings with ‘My
little Welsh home’ and ‘The White Cliffs of
Dover’, while capturing life’s brighter side with
‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Ferry cross the Mersey’.
fronchoir.com
Enchanted Voices
Howard Goodall’s Enchanted Voices
Classic FM
Classic FM’s composer-in-residence found
true inspiration in the words of Jesus’ Sermon
on the Mount. Howard Goodall’s Enchanted
Voices connects the ritual sounds of ancient
worship with a modern sensibility of simple
yet profoundly eloquent song. The pristine
purity of the work’s ensemble of female
voices, the contemplative undulations of his
haunting melodic lines and hypnotic writing
for strings and handbells combine here to
carry the sermon’s eight traditional Beatitudes
and four new Latin blessings. “Honouring
the peacemakers, the meek and the merciful
has never been more necessary nor urgent
as in our own time, nor has compassion for
the bereaved, the poor or the persecuted,”
observes the composer.
howardgoodall.co.uk
Introduced by Simon Bates,
the voice of mornings on Classic FM,
every weekday from 8am.
Camilla Kerslake
Camilla Kerslake
Future Records
Heroes
The Band of the Coldstream Guards
Decca
Band of Brothers
Only Men Aloud
Decca
O Fortuna
Rhydian
Syco Music
Harmony
The Priests
Epic
28
As the first signing to Gary Barlow’s new
label, Camilla was always destined to attract
attention. Her eponymous solo debut album,
a high climber in the UK classical chart,
proved the crossover credentials of an artist
determined to breathe fresh life into old
songs. “Classical is what I was born to do,”
she says. The Kerslake coloratura charmed the
ears of listeners nationwide, especially so when
her account of ‘How can I keep from singing?’
was chosen by Waitrose for its Christmas ad
campaign. Camilla scored another palpable
hit at the end of February when she sang
the national anthem to a packed Wembley
Stadium before the Carling Cup Final.
camillakerslake.com
With more than two centuries of history and
matching battle honours to its credit, the
Band of the Coldstream Guards ranks among
the world’s oldest military bands, legends of
Waterloo and countless campaigns’ since. The
band’s story is not simply one drawn from the
glorious past – its outstanding instrumentalists
continue to serve with distinction at home and
overseas. Ceremonial duties, concerts and
wind ensemble recitals bear witness to their
musical prowess, while duties as soldiers under
fire in Iraq and Afghanistan have contributed
to their regiment’s reputation as one of the
British Army’s finest fighting forces. Heroes pays
moving tribute to fallen comrades while stirring
spirits and stiffening sinews.
army.mod.uk/music/corps-band
From Last Choir Standing to Band of Brothers,
the vocal wizards of Only Men Aloud have done
wonders for choral music’s public profile. They
carried off BBC1’s Last Choir Standing talent
show title in August 2008, cut their first disc for
Decca a few months later and embarked on
their first UK tour last year. Band of Brothers
proved an apt title for the twenty-strong group’s
second release, a barnstorming collection of
familiar tunes and choral arrangements. The
Cardiff-based ensemble taps its Welsh roots in
works such as Men of Harlech and Land of my
fathers, blossoms in bold operatic numbers and
sets pulses racing with beguiling songs of love.
onlymenaloud.com
Birmingham Conservatoire has produced many
fine musicians since its foundation over 150 years
ago, composers Brian Ferneyhough and Albert
Ketèlbey notable among them. But it was a Welsh
baritone called Rhydian Roberts, unforgettable
in sound and appearance, who registered
on the public’s radar as the music school’s
most extraordinary alumnus. Rhydian, born in
Sennybridge, Powys in 1983, entered The X
Factor and came second in the show’s 2007 final.
O Fortuna stormed the charts last November led
by a red-hot take on Orff’s Carmina burana and a
duet with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. “This is the real
me as a singer,” said Rhydian’ about his grand
classical crossover debut disc.
rhydianroberts.com
Fathers Eugene O Hagan, Martin O Hagan
and David Delargy, collectively known to the
record-buying public and their parishioners
as The Priests, returned to the studio last year
(Abbey Road Studios, to be precise) to create
a second album. Harmony reached a huge
audience in the United Kingdom and in the
forty or so other countries already captivated
by the trio’s eponymous debut disc. “Harmony
essentially for me is about – in the busy, busy
world we all live in – trying to find a little bit of
stillness, of peace,” observes Fr Martin. “Maybe
this harmony will enable us to be at peace with
ourselves and with the world.”
thepriests.com/gb
29

Young British Classical Performer or Group
Composer of the Year
Introduced by Alex James,
presenter of The A-Z of Classic FM Music,
Sunday from 11am.
Politicians had much to say about the importance
of the arts during the recent general election
campaign. They’re not alone in recognising
that Britain’s creative talents could yet drive the
nation’s regeneration through an age of austerity
and economic uncertainty. Our young musicians
and their audiences already know the value of
nurturing the best of British. Millions across the
country were entranced by Faryl Smith’s delightful
debut album. She offers a strikingly positive
alternative to media stereotypes of troubled
teenagers, one marked by the burgeoning mezzosoprano’s
spirit of determination and record of
achievement. Jack Liebeck was last nominated
for this award five years ago, not long after his
graduation from the Royal Academy of Music. His
career progress since, at home and abroad, has
confirmed his status among the cream of young
British violinists. Stile Antico, meanwhile, deserves
to receive the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for its
work to promote music by Tudor and Jacobean
composers overseas. The chamber choir’s
miraculous performances could also sway The
Classical BRIT Academy’s voting in its favour.
Old barriers dividing contemporary classical music
from a large audience have collapsed in recent
years. Take a look at any iPod playlist and you’ll see
how listening tastes are now open to everything
from Cold Play and Fat Boy Slim to John Adams
and Arvo Pärt. Pieces by the three composers
shortlisted for Classical BRIT recognition this year
have reached far beyond the narrow doors of the
contemporary music ghetto. Howard Goodall’s
Enchanted Voices took the spirit of ancient sacred
chant and infused it with a modern sensibility.
His musical interpretation of the Sermon on the
Mount touched the hearts of millions of Classic FM
listeners and gently directed audiences to consider
the meaning of the Beatitudes. Thomas Adès
made his name with a series of exuberant scores
for small forces. His mature compositions have
explored big classical genres, grand opera among
them, and draw from a vast landscape of past
reference points to create true masterpieces of
contemporary music. Miniature forms and subtle
expression, meanwhile, characterise Ludovico
Einaudi’s instantly recognisable and immediately
accessible soundworld.
Introduced by Mark Forrest,
presenter of the Official Classic FM Chart,
Saturdays from 9am.
Faryl
Decca
Long before captivating the great British
public, young Faryl delighted the audience
at her primary school’s nativity play. The
prodigiously gifted songster went on to
participate in the Llangollen International
Musical Eisteddfod. She auditioned for
the second series of Britain’s Got Talent and
surged to the series final as the bookies’
favourite. Although she didn’t win, Simon
Cowell’s verdict pointed to a grand future
ahead. Faryl, he declared after her first
round performance, is “one in a million”
after her first round performance. “She is
by far the most talented youngster I've ever
heard,” he continued. “When she opens
her mouth her voice is just incredible.” The
talent-spotter’s opinion proved spot on.
Faryl’s eponymous debut album, recorded
during her school’s Christmas break in
December 2008, sold over 29,000 copies
within a week of its release last March and
has since passed sales of 150,000. Faryl, who
turns fifteen in July, added a second album
to her Decca discography shortly before
Christmas with the release of Wonderland.
farylmusic.com
Jack Liebeck
Sony Classics
Born in London in 1980, Jack’s rapid early
progress on violin was rewarded by a place
at the prestigious Purcell School of Music.
He enrolled at the Royal Academy of
Music in 1999 to continue his studies with
Professor Mateja Marinkovic, graduated four
years later and began making his name as a
concerto soloist and chamber music player.
Jack’s debut disc, on the Quartz label,
served notice of his formidable technical
gifts and of his spirited musicianship. He
signed an exclusive contract with Sony
Classical last year, the first fruits of which
attracted five-star reviews to his album
of Dvořák’s Violin Concerto, Sonata and
Sonatina. “This is wondrous playing of the
most compelling sort,” commented the Daily
Telegraph’s Geoffrey Norris on Liebeck’s
Dvořák recording, while Hugh Canning in
the Sunday Times noted that “the results
whet the appetite for more from this gifted
young Brit”. The violinist’s busy performance
schedule and forthcoming release of the
Brahms Violin Sonata offer Liebeck fans a
banquet of musical delights.
jackliebeck.com
Stile Antico
Harmonia Mundi
It has taken just five years for Stile Antico
to become a national treasure. Anyone
doubting the claim should listen to the
vocal ensemble’s latest recording, a sublime
survey of works by John Sheppard. The
conductorless group’s complement of young
singers emerged from the great British
choral tradition. Stile Antico – the name
translates as ‘the ancient style’ – hit the
ground running in 2005 when it won the
audience prize at the Early Music Network
International Young Artists’ Competition. Its
Harmonia Mundi releases have topped the
classical charts in the United States and are
a huge hit here with Classic FM listeners.
Stile Antico’s dozen members boast seriously
impressive biographies, a raft of music
degrees and professional singing experience
spanning umpteen different genres.
Their shared passion for early polyphony,
especially for works by Tudor composers and
their Flemish and Spanish contemporaries, is
perfectly served by the individual excellence
and corporate musicianship of its singers.
“Orgasmic,” wrote one reviewer of Stile
Antico’s work. No more need be said!
stileantico.co.uk
Howard Goodall
Enchanted Voices
Classic FM
Young Howard Goodall joined forces with
two savvy fellow students at Oxford’s Christ
Church to write music for their college reviews.
His sparky tunes complemented the early
work of Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis,
establishing enduring relationships that came
of age with Howard’s scores for Blackadder and
Mr Bean. Enchanted Voices followed Goodall’s
appointment in May 2008 as Classic FM’s
composer-in-residence. He chose to set part
of the Sermon on the Mount, as recalled in St
Matthew’s Gospel, in which Jesus confronts his
audience with a striking list of those blessed
by God: the poor, mourners, the hungry, those
persecuted for seeking righteousness, the
meek, the merciful, the pure of heart and the
peacemakers. Goodall added four new groups
to the Beatitudes to reflect on the cares of those
that are cared for, those that care for others,
the stateless and the lonely. “Honouring the
peacemakers, the meek and the merciful has
never been more necessary or urgent as in our
own time,” observes the composer.
howardgoodall.co.uk
Ludovico Einaudi
Nightbook
Decca
As the son of Italy’s foremost literary
publisher and grandson of a former Italian
president, Ludovico Einaudi was raised
among leaders in the world of arts and
letters. His mother encouraged his native
musical talents, which were later refined
with studies at Milan’s famous Conservatorio
Verdi and private lessons with Luciano Berio,
torchbearer of post-war Italy’s musical avantgarde.
Ludovico’s artistic path was set by his
desire to communicate clearly, openly and
elegantly with his audience. He set aside the
complex textures and intellectual pursuits of
musical modernism in favour of a minimalist
style of writing, one in which melody is king.
Nightbook, the composer’s latest project,
contemplates the shadowy borderland
between light and dark, the known and
the unknown. Einaudi sketched the score’s
raw materials during a lengthy world tour
before blending them together as a musical
dreamscape for piano, strings, percussion
and electronics. The composition, he says,
represents “another step into a new room,
opening a new door in my creativity.”
einaudiwebsite.com
Thomas Adès
The Tempest
EMI Classics
Born in London in 1971, Thomas Adès
grabbed early attention as a prodigiously
talented pianist. He was placed second
in the final of the 1990 BBC Young
Musician of the Year competition and
made his London solo recital debut three
years later. By then, Adès was already
a published composer. His Opus One,
Five Eliot Landscapes, was recorded on
a landmark disc issued in 1997 by EMI
Classics. While critics heralded the work’s
young composer as the natural heir to
Benjamin Britten, they were equally sure
of his sparkling originality. In 2005 the
New York Times named Adès among
“the most accomplished and complete
musicians of his generation”, an accolade
fully informed by the success of his second
opera. The Tempest, commissioned by
the Royal Opera House, had new things
to say about Shakespeare’s drama and
about opera in the 21st century. Following
Adès’s recent Carnegie Hall residency,
the New York Times concluded that he
“may be the most accomplished overall
musician before the public today”.
emiclassics.co.uk
Faryl Wonderland– echoes of
Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and
ancient carols merge in the
teen mezzo-soprano’s second
album, which also includes an
unforgettable duet with
Luciano Pavarotti.
(Decca/Universal Music 2722167)
Dvořák, Violin Works – characterful
music-making and strongly
individual readings of three
classics of the fiddle literature,
Dvořák’s Violin Concerto among
them, reveal Jack Liebeck’s
mature artistry.
(Sony Classical 88697499632)
Media vita – potential desert island
castaways should be sure to pack
Stile Antico’s latest album, an
exquisite survey of works by Tudor
composer John Sheppard.
Enchanted Voices – chant for our
times from Howard Goodall’s
composing desk turns to the words
of the Beatitudes and two millennia
of sacred music for its inspiration.
(Classic FM/Universal
Music CFMD7)
Nightbook – music stripped bare
to present the soul of Ludovico
Einaudi’s invention, Nightbook
draws listeners into a twilight
soundworld of spare piano
melodies and haunting timbres.
(Decca/Universal Music 4763639)
The Tempest – recorded at the
2007 Covent Garden revival of
this ravishing opera under its
composer’s direction, here’s the
ideal entry-point for newcomers to
the art of Adès.
(EMI Classics 6 95234 2 [2CD])
30
31

Soundtrack of the Year
It’s one thing to compose a string quartet or
symphony, yet another to write a pop hit or craft
an instantly memorable jazz ballad. The three men
in line for this year’s Classical BRIT soundtrack
prize share the all-round skills required to move
effortlessly from genre to genre. Their combined
career credits speak not just for their musical
versatility but for their deep inventive resources
and sheer brilliance. Countless millions worldwide
have heard their work. The really impressive thing,
though, is that a vast global audience can whistle
tunes by Messrs Desplat, Giacchino and Newman.
Alexandre Desplat’s work for European cinema,
recently honoured with an Étoile d’Or du Cinema,
stretches back to the mid-1980s. His massive
Hollywood presence underlines the composer’s
international popularity. Listen to Michael
Giacchino’s Oscar-nominated Up or his score to
Benjamin Button and you’ll understand why the
forty-two-year old has made such a triumphant
transition from television to the big screen. We’ve
known Thomas Newman’s great work for more
than quarter of a century. He’s come up with yet
another winning score for Revolutionary Road.
Introduced by Margherita Taylor,
presenter of Classic FM’s Smooth Classics at 6,
every day from 6pm.
Untitled-3 1 28/04/2010 18:01
Established in 1998 by Ruby Hammer and
Millie Kendall, Ruby & Millie has become a
fixture of modern British culture attracting a
loyal clientele that ranges from the discerning
over 30’s to fashion conscious teens. Ruby and
Millie has a wide range of products to suit all
skin tones and occasions.
Rituals is the first brand in the world to
combine Home & Body cosmetics.
Inspiring products for the care of
your body and home.
Happiness can be found
in the smallest of things: it
begins with feeling good about
yourself, savouring the intensity
of ordinary things. It is our passion
to transform everyday routines into
more meaningful rituals.
Rituals offers a vast collection of premium
products designed to transform everyday
routines into more meaningful rituals – from
nourishing face and body creams to pure tea,
scented candles and gemstone make-up.
rituals.com
STEAMCREAM is a luxurious
multi-tasking cream for
face, body and hands. It’s
formed using a revolutionary
steam-infused process to
create a light and glossy
texture for effective and quick
absorption. Using fresh, traceable, natural and
vegan ingredients, STEAMCREAM offers the
ultimate moisture injection with organic jojoba
oil, healing lavender oil, vitamin E rich almond
oil and cocoa butter which seals in all the
goodness. STEAMCREAM comes packaged in a
cleverly designed aluminium tin and is decorated
with constantly changing, limited edition and
collectible graphic art images. Once the cream
is finished, the tin can be re-used to provide a
uniquely collectible piece of art.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Alexandre Desplat
Concord
Thrice nominated for an Academy Award
and Golden Globe winner, Alexandre
Desplat has written over one hundred film
scores. Born in Paris in 1961, he began
piano lessons at the age of five. Alexandre
also learned trumpet and flute, opened his
ears to an extraordinary variety of music
and studied composition with iconic avantgardists
Iannis Xenakis and Claude Ballif.
Lessons with veteran Hollywood orchestrator
Jack Hayes provided invaluable technical
insights into writing for the movies. Desplat’s
early film credits include soundtracks for The
Hour of the Pig and a succession of French
cinema scores. His Hollywood breakthrough
came in 2003 with a beautifully crafted score
for The Girl with the Pearl Earring. Recent
successes include music for Stephen Frears’s
The Queen, Roman Polanski’s The Ghost
Writer, Wes Anderson's animated feature
Fantastic Mr Fox and the Twilight sequel,
A New Moon. His music to The Curious
Case of Benjamin Button offers a wistful
complement to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tale of
the man who grew old backwards.
alexandredesplat.net
Star Trek
Michael Giacchino
Varese Sarabande
New Jersey native Michael Giacchino recalls
how he became a ‘Star Wars geek at the
age of nine. “When I saw it,” he explains,
“this little red light went off in my head that
said, 'That's what I want to do!'”. Evening
classes at New York’s prestigious Juilliard
School of Music and Drama and a degree in
film production provided firm foundations
to turn a boyhood dream into adult reality.
Giacchino’s route to Hollywood opened up
in 1997 when he composed the music for
the DreamWorks video game version of The
Lost World: Jurassic Park. It may be common
today, but this was the first video game to
feature an original soundtrack for symphony
orchestra. Michael was booked by J.J.
Abrams to write music for two hit television
series Alias and Lost. His movie career
began in 2004 with The Incredibles, gathered
speed with charming scores to Dixney-
Pixar’s Ratatouille and Up, and entered fresh
territory last year with the soundtrack to
Abrams’s Star Trek feature film.
michaelgiacchinomusic.com
Revolutionary Road
Thomas Newman
Nonesuch
Composing for the movies is in the Newman
genes. Thomas’s father, Alfred, received
forty-five Oscar nominations and nine
Academy Awards during a career spanning
forty years. His uncle Lionel, brother David
and cousins Joey and Randy also belong to
Hollywood’s musical royal family. Thomas
has garnered ten Oscar nominations to date,
not least for Little Women, The Shawshank
Redemption, American Beauty and The
Road to Perdition. His soundtrack for Sam
Mendes’s American Beauty won BAFTA
and Grammy Awards and highlighted the
outstanding qualities of a composer at the
height of his powers. Newman studied at
the University of Southern California and
at Yale with, among others, film composer
David Raskin and Jacob Druckman. Private
lessons with George Tremblay contributed
to his armoury of compositional skills,
which have now served the cause of over
fifty movies and the hit television series Six
Feet Under and Angels in America. Newman
was reunited with Mendes for Revolutionary
Road, a disturbing tale of dysfunctional life in
1950s suburban Connecticut.
nonesuch.com/artists/thomas-newman
boots.com
steamcream.co.uk
33

Critics’ Award
Introduced by David Mellor,
presenter of Classic FM’s New CD Show,
Saturday at 5pm.
Our critical cogitations, aided by lunch at the
Ivy Club, were addressed to a fabulous list of
eighteen releases this year. The strength of the
titles put forward by the panel’s eight members,
not to mention their depth, underlined the
sheer quality of new recordings issued since we
last met to judge the Critics’ Award. Persuasive
cases were made for the respective merits of
rarities by Telemann and Martinu supremely
eloquent interpretations of masterworks by Bach,
Beethoven and Brahms; dazzling Rossini and
German operatic arias, and the contemporary
delights and contrasts of The NMC Songbook,
just one of several outstanding albums from
British independent labels to catch the critics’
ears. One clear winner emerged from the pack,
preparing the way for a fiery debate about the
runners-up. In the end, we agreed that each of
the recordings on our final shortlist owned
the blend of artistic qualities and musical
alchemy required to ensure their lasting
survival in the classical catalogue.
The BRIT School
John Deacon, Judy Martin, Sir George Martin and Nick Williams
The BRIT Class Act initiative is an exciting new
project from the BPI which is set to unearth the
next generation of talent in the UK’s schools.
The initiative’s website, britclassact.co.uk, is
a safe online platform where students can
showcase their music, enter their best tracks
into the official schools’ chart and compete to
win a special BRIT Class Act Award.
Piers Morgan and the First News organisation
are spearheading the nationwide quest for
new talent and there is cross party political
support for the venture.
Beethoven: Complete Sonatas
for violin and piano
Isabelle Faust/
Alexander Melnikov
Harmonia Mundi HMC 902025.27 (3CD + DVD)
German violinist Isabelle Faust made the
most ear-catching of recording debuts on
Harmonia Mundi in 1997, with typically
insightful, intelligent and exquisitely played
readings of Bartók’s Solo Violin Sonata
and Sonata No.1 for violin and piano.
Her relationship with the French label
has blossomed over the years to deliver
a succession of fine albums, none better
than her complete set of Beethoven’s Violin
Sonatas. Faust’s musicianship, refreshingly
lyrical and exquisitely refined in nuance
and shading, is matched in every bar by
the poetic pianism of Alexander Melnikov,
a graduate of Moscow’s Tchaikovsky
Conservatory and spare-time aviator. There’s
no want of flying metaphors to be had about
their performances here. Faust and Melnikov
soar high above the ordinary, transcending
the technical twists and turns of Beethoven’s
scores to reach their spiritual essence. The
violinist’s latest release, three of Bach’s solo
partitas and sonatas, will surely rank among
the frontrunners for next year’s Critics’ Award.
Will her name be on the trophy in 2010?
harmoniamundi.com
Rachmaninov: 24 Preludes
Steven Osborne
Hyperion CDA67700
Rachmaninov’s Preludes, like Chopin’s Études
and Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, belong
to the supreme works of the classical piano
literature. They’re also among the greatest
tests of a concert pianist’s technical prowess
and artistry. Steven Osborne’s complete
survey of the works, recorded in London’s
Henry Wood Hall, can hold its own with the
best in the catalogue. The Scottish pianist
presents a spellbinding journey through
Rachmaninov’s two books of Preludes,
prefacing both mighty collections with
a heart-melting account of his Prelude
in C-sharp minor. He conjures up here a
compelling narrative of emotions and their
expression. Although Osborne pays homage
to the great legacy of romantic Rachmaninov
interpretation, not least to the composer’s
own performances of the Preludes, he greatly
expands the register of tonal light and shade
so often applied to these pieces. The Times
rightly identified this release as ‘one of the
piano discs of the year’, while the Observer
spoke of its performer’s ‘combination of
modesty, inner fire and virtuosity’.
stevenosborne.co.uk
Verdi : Messa da Requiem
Harteros, Ganassi, Villazón, Pape;
Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia
Nazionale di Santa Cecilia/
Antonio Pappano
EMI Classics 6 98936 2 (2CD)
Recordings under the direction of Toscanini,
De Sabata, Giulini and Muti, to name but four
outstanding conductors, have set vertiginous
benchmarks against which new versions of
Verdi’s Requiem must be judged. Antonio
Pappano’s performance can hold its own with
the all-time best on disc. There are too many
fine things about his interpretation and its
execution to number here. But the humanity
of the conductor’s reading and the spirituality
of the collective music-making stand out
as subjects for special praise. The same
can be said of Pappano’s pick of soloists, a
quartet blessed with the rich vocal colours
and compassion required to bring Verdi’s
arching melodies to vivid life. Our critics
were captivated too by the quality of the
Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. The
Roman chorus and orchestra have aspired
to reach Parnassian levels of excellence
since Pappano’s appointment as their music
director five years ago. This recording, made
in concert in January 2009, reveals the two
ensembles to be on top form.
emiclassics.co.uk
The BRIT School provides its students with
an unparalleled springboard to success,
with former pupils from the Selhurst-based
establishment excelling in a plethora of
entertainment industry fields. However,
the popularity of the free-to-attend BRIT
School - funded by a happy and unique
partnership between the BRIT Trust and
the Department for Children, Schools
and Families – means the school has been
greatly oversubscribed in recent years.
2009 brought a new beginning for the school,
with ambitious expansion plans finally coming
to fruition. Sir George Martin unveiled a
wonderful new Music and Drama facility, while
the main building benefitted from upgraded
classroom and digital arts facilities as well as
improved social areas for students.
The students, who are aged 14-19, now have
the space to make the most of their creative
gifts. And with industry-standard equipment
available, there are no technical limitations to
curb their never-waning enthusiasm and talent.
BRIT School students enjoy vocational
learning in one of six core study strands
– dance, media, music, musical theatre,
production theatre and visual arts and
design – while maintaining strong academic
standards at the same time.
Of course, BRIT School alumni are now
among the most recognised stars on the
planet. However, the school’s ethos is to
create stars in all aspects of the creative
fields – and you will find former pupils in
powerful and fulfilling roles throughout
music, theatre, the media and beyond.
Throughout the summer the Class Act
website will be gearing students up for the
main event, which begins in September, with
a variety of competitions and experiences.
Class Act members will be given the chance
to win tickets to music festivals, play on the
same stage as top acts like JLS and get hints
and tips from the professionals on how to
make it in the music industry.
Class Act is also set to go live on First TV,
a new online TV channel for teenagers,
which will be fronted by You Tube sensation
Charlie McDonnell.
BRIT Class Act Award is a highlight of The
National Year of Music. The winner will receive
a coveted Class Act BRIT Award in 2011, and
could kick start a successful career.
Register now at britclassact.co.uk
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34

Nominations List
José Carreras at the Classical BRIT Awards 2009
receiving his Lifetime Achievement in Music Award
with Plácido Domingo, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
and HRH The Duchess of Cornwall.
Photo: jmenternational.com
BPI/BRIT Awards Ltd
Chairman: Tony Wadsworth
Vice-Chair: Mike Batt
CEO: Geoff Taylor
Event Director: Maggie Crowe
Event Manager: Adrian Carter
Event Coordinator: Clare Cooke
Finance: Mark Fletcher & Sarah Stuart
Legal: Nick Glynn & Tim Major
Sponsorship & Marketing: Sarah Sinclair
Ticketing: Steve Clements
Digital: Barney Wragg
is proud to be working with
the 2010 Classical BRIT Awards
Female Artist of the Year
Angela Gheorghiu
Puccini/Madama Butterfly
EMI Classics
Anna Netrebko
Bellini/I Capuleti e i Montecchi
Deutsche Grammophon
Marin Alsop
Bernstein/Mass
Naxos
Male Artist of the Year
Antonio Pappano
Puccini/Madama Butterfly;
Verdi/Messa da Requiem
EMI Classics
Bryn Terfel
Bad Boys
Deutsche Grammophon
Vasily Petrenko
Shostakovich/Symphonies
Nos. 11 and 5 & 9
Naxos
Tavener/Requiem
EMI Classics
Composer of the Year
Howard Goodall
Enchanted Voices
Classic FM
Ludovico Einaudi
Nightbook
Decca
Thomas Adès
The Tempest
EMI Classics
Young British Classical
Performer or Group
Faryl Smith
Decca
Jack Liebeck
Sony Classics
Stile Antico
Harmonia Mundi
Soundtrack of the Year
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Alexandre Desplat
Concord
Star Trek
Michael Giacchino
Varese Sarabande
Revolutionary Road
Thomas Newman
Nonesuch
Critics’ Award
Beethoven/Complete Sonatas
for violin and piano
Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov
Harmonia Mundi
Rachmaninov/Preludes
Steven Osborne
Hyperion
Verdi/Messa da Requiem
Harteros, Ganassi, Villazón, Pape
Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia
Nazionale di Santa Cecilia/
Antonio Pappano
EMI Classics
NS&I Album of the Year
Alma Mater – Music from the Vatican
Featuring the voice of Pope Benedict XVI
Geffen
Together
Blake
Blake Music
Camilla Kerslake
Camilla Kerslake
Future Records
Heroes
The Band of the Coldstream Guards
Decca
Faryl
Faryl
Decca
Voices of the Valley – Memory Lane
Fron Male Voice Choir
Decca
Enchanted Voices
Howard Goodall’s Enchanted Voices
Classic FM
Band of Brothers
Only Men Aloud
Decca
O Fortuna
Rhydian
Syco Music
Harmony
The Priests
Epic
Lifetime Achievement in Music
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
Nominations are from the Academy voting,
except NS&I Album of the Year which is chosen
by Classic FM listeners and Classic FM Magazine
readers; the Soundtrack of the Year Award which
is chosen by a panel from film and television and
the winner of the Critics’ Award which is chosen
by a panel of critics from the national media.
The Classical BRIT Awards 2010 Committee
Co-Chairmen: Mark Wilkinson & Barry McCann
Committee Members: Adrian Carter, Chloe Mason,
Geoff Taylor, Helen Terry, Maggie Crowe,
Sarah Sinclair, Stefan Bown
BPI Classical Committee
Chairman: Geoff Taylor (BPI), Vice-Chair: Ginny Cooper
(Coda Distribution), Barry McCann (Avie / Classical BRITs),
Alexa Robertson (EMI), Chaz Jenkins (LSO), David Blake
(Select), Eleanor Wilson (NMC Recordings), Helen Peate
(Wigmore Hall), Hywel Davies, Jeremy Elliott
(Retrospective Rectordings), John Cronin (Divine Arts),
John Harte (Collegium), Lorna Aizlewood (EMI),
Mark Wilkinson (Universal), Matthew Cosgrove (Onyx),
Mike Spring (Hyperion), Patrick Lemanski (Harmonia
Mundi), Pollyanna Gunning (Sony Music), Ralph Couzens
(Chandos), Richard Gay (Universal), Richard Connell (Sony
Music), Simon Foster (Avie), Stefan Bown (Warner Music),
Steve Long (Signum), Steve Smith (Gimell),
Rashmi Patani (RSK Entertainment).
Award Judges
Soundtrack: Marc Samuleson, Marc Robinson, Simon Bates,
Fiona Hughes, Alexa Fanning, Michael Attenborough,
Mark Wilkinson, Sarah Sinclair
Critics: Andrew McGregor, Andrew Stewart,
Barry McCann, David Mellor, James Inverne, John Evans,
Rob Cowan, Sam Jackson, Sarah Sinclair, Warwick Thompson,
Television Show
Produced by BRITs TV for ITV Productions
Producer: Chloe Mason
Director: Nikki Parsons
Executive Producer: Helen Terry
Executive Producer for ITV Productions: John Kaye Cooper
Production Manager: Annie Crofts
Associate Producer: Gavin O'Grady
Production Co-ordinator: Holly Enness
Event Production
BRIT Awards (Productions) Ltd
Project Manager: Kate Wright (Papilo)
Production Manager: Maggie Mouzakitis (Papilo)
Production Coordinator: Lisa Shenton (Papilo)
Stage Manager: Mike Grove
Set Design: Peter Bingemann
Lighting Designer: Gurdip Mahal
Media
Media and Public Relations: LD Communications
TV Promotion: Nonstop Promotions
Graphic Design & Photography: JM Enternational
Event Programme
Publisher: JM Enternational
Consultant Editor: Andrew Stewart
Consultant Advertising Director: Kathy Leppard
Website
Webmaster: Neil Saxby (classicalbrits.co.uk)
Venue
Royal Albert Hall
Catering
Leith’s
With Special Thanks To
Jane Platt, Chief Executive Officer, NS&I
Darren Henley, Managing Director, Classic FM
Chris Cotton, CEO, Royal Albert Hall
CFMD13
CFMD10
CFMD7
CFMBX1
THE UK’S NO1 CLASSICAL RADIO STATION
Available now at
www.classicfm.com
36

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Have a lovely evening and enjoy this
programme with our compliments