The Stanley Sadie Handel Recording Prize has this year been given to Fabio Bonizzoni’s recording of the dialogue cantata Apollo e Dafne.

The Glossa recording, with Bonizzoni’s group La Risonanza, were awarded the accolade by a panel of judges which included Gramophone critics Lindsay Kemp and David Vickers. The prize is given every year to a ‘distinctive new recording of Handel’s music’, deemed to ‘combine fine interpretive quality with a penetrating or valuable insight into Handel’s genius’. Launched in 2002, in 2005 it was renamed in honour of Sadie, musicologist, editor of Grove and a Gramophone writer, who had died that year.

Commenting on the winning disc, the judges said: ‘The cantata has rightly become established as one of Handel’s most popular “Italian” compositions, and this captivating performance by La Risonanza forms a fittingly essential conclusion to Fabio Bonizzoni’s ambitious project to record all of Handel’s Italian-period cantate con stromenti for the Spanish early music label Glossa. Thomas E Bauer and Roberta Invernizzi are to be praised for their outstanding singing, which is always aptly characterised and suavely stylish, and the playing of La Risonanza is gently dramatic and always beautifully detailed.’

The disc concluded La Risonanza's seven-disc series of 'Le cantate Italiane di Handel', and was the third installment to receive the prize. The release was named Recording of the Month in the October 2010 issue of Gramophone. You can find it on Amazon here: Apollo e Dafne.