The first Opus Klassik prize, the soprano Diana Damrau was awarded as the singer of the year. In the new edition, the old regulations were still valid.
The concert house orchestra played by women, the baton, the Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra swung. Otherwise, the new beginning of the most important German classical music award visually hardly recognizable: the first awarding of the Opus classic, the successor to the Echo Klassik, led, as in previous years, Thomas Gottschalk, and the trophy itself has a Similarity with its predecessor.
Nevertheless the award ceremony in the Konzerthaus on Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt square, on Sunday evening should be to the scandal of the Echo in the spring, a dawning of better times. The Opus classic is not awarded by the Federal Association of the music industry, but by the newly founded Association for the promotion of Classical music e. V., in the Label, organizers, and publishers are represented.
Young artists: Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason played at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Abba goes classical
The members chose the soprano Diana Damrau to singer of the year, she received the first Opus of the Evening. As singer of the year, the Peruvian Tenor Juan Diego Flórez accepted the award for his Album “Mozart”. Conductor of the year, the German Cornelius Meister, the orchestra of the year, the Gewandhaus orchestra in Leipzig.
Instrumentalist of the year in piano of the Russian Daniil Trifonov. Another pianistic hope, Frank Dupree, had a hand in the recording of George Antheil’s piano Concerto No. 1, as a concert recording of the year (music 20./21. Century) was excellent.
As a young artist, the 32-year-old Swiss soprano Regula mühlemann was awarded the award for the young artists, the British Cellist, Sheku Kanneh-Mason. The 19-year-old shooting star was played in may in the Ensemble at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Abba composer Benny Andersson, who plays on his Album “Piano” piano arrangements of the world-famous group, took receipt of the Opus in the category “classics without borders”, the 1928 Berlin-born mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig was awarded the prize for life’s work. She worked with conductors such as Karl Böhm, Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein, 1994, she ended her career.
You set the pace: The Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra led the concert house orchestra.
“Classical music is for everyone,” said star tenor Rollando Villazón’s announcement of the Opus will be a price, of orienting solely on the quality. At the first awards ceremony, the organisers were, however, to the rules and regulations of the defunct Echo, also on the sales figures. In the future, should not be limited, however, the award in the recorded music market.
On The Piano: Abba Composer Benny Andersson
Last April, the bodies of the German Federal Association of the music industry had decided to include the music prize of Echo for Pop and Rock after 26 years to abolish – and with it the separately awarded Echo Klassik. Advance long debate on the nomination and ultimately the award of the rappers Kollegah and Farid Bang, for anti-Semitic, and misanthropic texts in the criticism was gone for a week. Numerous previous Echo-prize winner had returned their awards in Protest. As the successor solution to the Pop-Echo looks like is still open.
tla/rf (dpa)