Looking through this year’s roll call of Award winners – each winner superb and richly deserving of your time as listener (and, we hope, re-listener, as you get to know the performances more intimately through repeated attention to everything their artists have to bring us) – it’s tempting to look for themes, for things that link all the recipients together as representing something specific of our time.

But perhaps the main thing the list does reflect, apart from excellence of course, is the extraordinary diversity of music-making today. You will encounter some faces familiar to our Awards coverage: some of the highest-profile and oft-recorded musicians of our day, artists who continue to evolve across years, decades even, their recent achievements more than justifying the hope and expectation of those earlier accolades. But then there are also those just beginning their careers, yet already doing so as global sensations – this year’s Young Artist of the Year will need no introduction to any reader of Gramophone, a competition winner whose performance from that event even made it to the final shortlist of his category, a remarkable feat in itself.

Throughout the Award-winning albums – and through our Special Awards too, chosen by Gramophone’s editorial team – there run many stories. A Choral recording that draws its young singers from a transformative educational scheme. A Contemporary winner that pays tribute to one of the great composers of our time, who died last year. An Artist of the Year who has just marked her own major milestone in recording: it’s with gratitude for all she has given to classical music, and will continue to do for many years, that we bestow this title on her. Perhaps that’s what links all this year’s winners – gratitude. Gratitude from us, and we know from all of you too, to all the artists and organisations honoured, for everything they give music.

And finally, my regular and wholehearted encouragement to you to spend time not just with the winning recordings, but with all the shortlisted albums too – every one sufficiently brilliant to have reached the stage that they did. Happy listening!

Select any of the images below to explore this year's winners...

Recording of the Year

Recording Categories

Special Awards