This year's Gramophone Classical Music Awards shortlist (which you can explore in our free digital magazine, presented in association with Presto Classical) serves to highlight the sheer quality on record not just of performance, but also of mastering, engineering and A&R.

There are solo recordings by Murray Perahia, Arcadi Volodos and Pierre-Laurent Aimard; concerto recordings featuring soloists Christian Tetzlaff, Steven Isserlis and Piotr Anderszewski; outstanding new accounts of Berlioz's Les Troyens (conducted by John Nelson) and Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (with Sir Simon Rattle) in the opera category; and Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé (Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth) and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 6, Pathétique (MusicaAeterna and Teodor Currentzis).

You can read the full, original Gramophone reviews of all 60 of this year's shortlisted albums in our free digital magazine. Follow the link below to read the digital magazine on Exact Editions:

Gramophone Awards Shortlist digital magazine

You can also read the digital magazine via the Gramophone app, which you can download from iTunes here: 

Gramophone app

We will be revealing which recordings have made it in to the top 3 of each category in the September issue (published digitally on August 10), and then announcing which recordings have won each recording category here on the Gramophone website on August 31. The winners of the special Awards (including Recording of the Year, Orchestra of the Year, Artist and Young Artist of the Year, Label of the Year and Lifetime Achievement) will be announced at the Gramophone Classical Music Awards ceremony on September 13, which will be livestreamed via medici.tv.