Gramophone Classical Music Awards 1981
Friday, April 11, 2025
All of the winners of the 1981 edition of the Gramophone Classical Music Awards, headlined by a Recording of the Year Award for Karajan's Parsifal
Recording of the Year & Operatic category
Wagner Parsifal
José van Dam bass-bar Amfortas Kurt Moll bass Gurnemanz Peter Hofmann ten Parsifal Siegmund Nimsgern bar Klingsor Dunja Vejzovic mez Kundry German Opera Chorus; Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Herbert von Karajan (DG)
Producers: Günther Breest, Michel Glatz; Engineer: Günther Hermanns
Wagner's Parsifal, as interpreted by Karajan on these digital records, is part of a long-term plan which has so far given us The Ring, Tristan und Isolde, and Die Meistersinger. This Parsifal was studied and rehearsed to festival pitch, then recorded in studio fashion, afterwards staged in Salzburg at Easter, with Karajan as stage director. Each of these sets has its special excellences. In Parsifal there is chiefly the exquisite sound of orchestra blended with a diversity of vocal music in a pure, rather classical style, hardly disturbed by the more hectic drama of the Second Act.
That act is certainly as central to Karajan as it was to Wagner, and Karajan does not underplay it, given his Klingsor, Siegmund Nimsgern, a magnificent character-baritone, and his Kundry, Dunja Vejzovic, whom he coached, we learn, for a year, and who negotiates impossible music with extraordinary success. Peter Hofmann's Parsifal is ideally heroic and most musical, if not vocally so sumptuous as the role demands. José van Dam as Amfortas, and Kurt Moll as Gurnemanz, set the seal of eloquence and authenticity on the performance. William Mann
Chamber
Bartók String Quartets
Tokyo Quartet (DG)
Producers: Steven Paul, Cord Garben; Engineers: Jobst Eberhardt, Edward Graham, Klaus Hiemann, Karl-August Naegler.
The outstanding success of this recording, in a field where there is no shortage of impressive competition, lies in its combination of sustained technical excellence and consistently imaginative interpretation, realized through a notably truthful and sensitive recorded sound. The prime virtue of the set as a whole is its finely balanced flow of events, with a flexibility that hardly ever seems self-conscious or artificial.
In the First Quartet, concentration and spontaneity are in ideal balance, and the performance of No 2, shunning the easy paths of understatement in the outer movements, has a richly homogeneous and live texture. In No 3 the players make appropriately strong contrasts between the prevailing drama and the occasional lyric episodes; in Nos 4 and 5 they always offer buoyancy rather than mere strenuousness, and in the first movement of No 5, in particular, there is an epic quality which shows the music in a new, and newly impressive, light. As for the last quartet, the generally intense but never over-driven approach gives weight to the emotional immediacy of the music while vividly catching the varied shades of bitter humour which accompany it.
These performances do justice to some of the greatest music of the twentieth century. But the set offers enjoyment as well as instruction, and it is this unmistakable blend of vitality and sensitivity which is, ultimately, its most memorable achievement. Arnold Whittall
Choral
Delius The Fenby Legacy
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Eric Fenby (Unicorn-Kanchana)
Producer: Christopher Palmer; Engineers: Bob Auger, Tony Faulkner, Geoffrey Barton
The Editor lays down no criteria on which we should base our voting for the annual Gramophone Record Awards, so what follows must be taken only as the considerations which decide my own votes. For me there are two overriding things to be considered: the enterprise of the project, and the thoroughness of the success with which it has been carried out.
This Unicorn-Kanchana issue called The Fenby Legacy undoubtedly meets my criteria in most generous measure. It began as the idea of one man, Christopher Palmer, a Delius enthusiast who also has a large experience of recording. So you have the right man to oversee the scheme (of recording works by Delius almost all of which we have only because of the devotion and astonishing musicianship of his amanuensis Dr Eric Fenby). Then, full marks to Unicorn for accepting what must have been an expensive series of sessions. Soloists have been chosen, every one of whom is not only a fine artist but is also completely in sympathy with Delius’s music. What is more, the records bring to the catalogue a number of major works not otherwise available, all of them splendidly performed and recorded.
A legacy can be quite a small sum. This is the equivalent of being left a large fortune. It has given me the utmost pleasure ever since it appeared and I hope its success in gaining this award will encourage the sales which it deserves, for it is – artistically, and indeed from every point of view – a total success. Trevor Harvey
Concerto
Beethoven Violin Concerto in D, Op 61
Itzhak Perlman vn Philharmonia Orchestra / Carlo Maria Giulini (HMV)
Producer: Suvi Raj Grubb; Engineer: Michael Gray
With this recording Itzhak Perlman confirms the world dominance as a master violinist which he has been establishing even in the face of his finest current rivals. Only rarely with a repertory work so frequently performed yet so taxing can one give a firm commendation for one version over all others; yet in this instance that is possible. To a remarkable degree Perlman manages to combine all the most desirable qualities. In the first movement his spacious steady tempo conveys breadth of meditation – the very first rising entry is disarmingly gentle – yet it is a dramatic reading too and outstandingly strong both tonally and structurally. It is a mark of Perlman’s mastery that with the barest inflection of a phrase, he can stamp it with his individuality while never for a moment sounding self-conscious, let alone exaggeratedly expressive.
The unity of the performance undoubtedly owes much too to the inspired direction of Giulini with the Philharmonia Orchestra, spacious and strong in the way he establishes in the Eroica Symphony. Now it can be told that Perlman insisted on remaking his recording, dissatisfied with the results of earlier sessions. That plainly added to the success of this version too, not just in the broad challenge of the first movement but in the rapt meditation of the second and the energetic exuberance of the finale, taken fast but with infectiously sprung rhythms. In digital sound, this is a classic version to send us into the new recording age. Edward Greenfield
Contemporary
Tippett King Priam
Norman Bailey bar Priam Robert Tear ten Achilles Thomas Allen bar Hector Heather Harper sop Hecuba Yvonne Minton cont Helen London Sinfonietta Chorus; London Sinfonietta / David Atherton (Decca/Chandos)
Producers: James Mallinson, Chris Hazell; Engineers: James Lock, John Pellowe
I would like to think that this splendid performance would have received an award even if there were no 'contemporary' category to place it in. More than most recent operas, King Priam is a myth that deeply stirs the subconscious, renews ancient archetypes of tragedy, and answers to the needs and imperatives of its time—as the finest music-dramas have always done. It is full of unforgettable images: the wild war-cry of Achilles, the meeting of Achilles and Priam—grief unbending the hard ferocity of the one and the stoic authority of the other—the guttering firelight of the besiegers' camp before the walls of Troy. These are vividly captured in David Atherton's precisely balanced account of the score.
Casting is a challenge in an opera that has no real subsidiary roles, yet there are no weak links here—a remarkable achievement, especially given the recording followed a single concert performance, not the extended preparation of a staged production. A heartening accomplishment: a demonstration that our age can produce images of grandeur and nobility, healing images for an era of conflict, purging images for a time of disordered values. This is an opera that grows with closer acquaintance, as does one's admiration and gratitude for a subtly responsive performance. Michael Oliver
Engineering & Production
Massenet Werther
José Carreras ten Werther Frederica von Stade mez Charlotte Thomas Allen bar Albert Isobel Buchanan sop Sophie Royal Opera House Orchestra, Covent Garden / Sir Colin Davis (Philips/Decca)
Producer: Erik Smith; Engineer: Hans Lauterslater
With so many digital records issued during 1981, there has been a danger of allowing the details associated with digital tape mastering to obscure our overall view of the engineering and production virtues of individual recordings. Our quarterly Sounds in Retrospect feature has reported many examples of discs where a proper solution of such balance problems as aural perspective and the recreation of a natural ambience contributed much more to the disc's musical impact than the merely clinical 'cleaning up' of sound which the better digital discs can achieve. So, for the second year running, our final vote has gone to an analogue recording.
Massenet's opera Werther was the subject of one of those record company duplications which we mere mortals find so inexplicable. Therefore, though Philips actually recorded this present version as long ago as February 1980, around the time that the production was running at Covent Garden, they held up its release until October 1981 to avoid clashing with versions from other quarters. It is a studio recording, yet the engineers have recreated the theatrical atmosphere perfectly, with an excellent feeling of distance where appropriate (off-stage voices, for example), and the orchestra is beautifully balanced. While half a dozen of the recordings nominated for this Award scored close to full marks, the sum of the virtues revealed in this Philips recording just tipped the scales in its favour. John Borwick
Early Music
German Chamber Music Before Bach
Cologne Musica Antiqua (Archiv Produktion)
Producer: Andreas Holschneider; Engineer: Wolfgang Mitlehner
How early – or rather how late – is 'Early Music'? For the purpose of the Award, it was decreed that it could go up to about 1750; which means an awful lot of music. The panel wished for an enterprising repertoire, performed not only 'authentically' (whatever that meant) but with skill and imagination, involving some scholarly perception and an attractiveness to the non-specialist. The anthology of German Chamber Music before Bach met our (admittedly loose) criteria completely.
The music by composers of whom the most famous was Buxtehude (a Bach arrangement hardly counts) is virtually unknown but equally worthy of revival. Both the sonatas by Reincken came as a revelation to this reviewer at least; the works of Rosenmüller are only a shade less remarkable. The performances are virtuosic. The mannerisms which have been irritating in some recent performances on baroque violins are here well under control, the rhythms are well defined, and the sound quality always attractive.
Anyone who likes any music of the seventeenth century (or indeed the later Baroque) can hardly fail to be convinced by both music and its execution, especially in a recording as well balanced and vivid as this one. Our proxime accessit vied quite strongly with this. The Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso el Sabio as realized and sung by Esther Lamandier called out the comment of one of us (admittedly no specialist in the thirteenth century) that the record made the most convincing case for music of this kind he had ever heard. Denis Arnold
Historical (non-vocal)
Brahms Chamber works
Busch Quartet; Rudolf Serkin pf Reginald Kell cl Aubrey Brain hn (World Records)
Transfer Engineer: Keith Hardwick; Engineers include Anthony Griffith, Edward Fowler, Harold Davidson.
The Busch Quartet brought mastery, wisdom, and humanity to all their music-making, and their Brahms is no less of a revelation than their late Beethoven, which World Records have reissued over the years. In a year that also included the reissue of Schnabel's Beethoven Sonatas cycle, it might seem perverse to choose anything else, for that is one of the great triumphs of the gramophone. Yet Schnabel's Beethoven has already been in circulation twice – first on the 'Great Recordings of the Century' label from EMI, and subsequently on Angel Seraphim imports.
The Busch performances are nearly all new to LP (at least in this country) and, as far as the majority of younger collectors are concerned, probably less celebrated. They span a period of nearly two decades and include performances that, like many of Schnabel's, remain unsurpassed. As RO observed à propos the C minor Quartet, Op 51 No 1, its slow movement alone shows why the Busch Quartet was regarded even in its own day 'with an awe that bordered on the religious', and the box as a whole justifies this veneration. The Clarinet Quintet is very special indeed.
True, since it is a complete legacy, it includes their post-war B flat Quartet, Op 67, which is less impressive – but then, not all of the Schnabel Beethoven performances are of equal merit. These seven discs will give a lifetime's pleasure. Robert Layton
Historical (vocal)
The Hugo Wolf Society, Vols 1-7
Various artists (HMV/EMI)
Transfer Engineer: Keith Hardwick; Producers: Fred Gaisberg, Walter Legge; Engineers: Edward Fowler, Robert Beckett
In praising last year's winner in this section, I commented that the benefit of historic issues was to remind us of the style and performing tradition of a bygone age. That is also true of this year's choice. We have gained much over the years in the subtlety and growing sophistication of Wolf interpretation, but we have also lost something. What Max Loppert (in The Financial Times) has described as the 'interventionist' approach has deprived us of the natural, instinctive style, based on legato and firm tone, as displayed by such singers as Janssen, Kipnis, Rethberg, and Hüsch in this reissue.
Another writer has even suggested that Wolf's songs are so detailed in themselves that they need only the kind of effortless, straightforward singing they receive here. That may be going too far, and in any case those artists mentioned, and others such as Erb, Lemnitz, Roswaenge (in his unforgettable Feuerreiter), McCormack (in his elevated if controversial Ganymed), and Schorr (in his majestic Prometheus) are all quite aware of the significance of words and tone colouring.
No, either as an exercise in nostalgia or as an unforgettable experience in its own right, this set is indispensable for any Lieder-lover. Alan Blyth
Instrumental
Liszt Late Piano Works
Alfred Brendel (Philips)
Balance Engineer/Producer: Volker Straus
In the essay which accompanies this record, Brendel writes that 'it was left to our time to discover Liszt's late piano pieces,' because only in the light – or darkness – of twentieth-century music have some of their enigmas been resolved. Perhaps his fine recital's winning the Instrumental Category award may be taken as a recognition of the fact.
Romantic concepts of pianism still operate in the deeply moving threnody Aux cyprès de la Villa d'Este, and, of course, in Les jeux d'eau à la Villa d'Este, although the latter was also a starting-point of impressionistic keyboard writing. An attenuated Romanticism also informs the Valse oubliée, in whose somewhat diabolic elegance Brendel excels.
But the unadorned statements, juxtapositions, confrontations of some of the other pieces venture into quite new territory, and the pianist, ably seconded by the engineer, implies a greater range of nuances than he seems to use. These pages imply several kinds of disillusionment, or, in the parallel-fifths savagery of Czardas macabre, a bitter reaction against them.
Innocence, or a recollection of it, is suggested, too, by consonant passages like that which succeeds the hectic, dissonant insistence with which Unstern, Sinistre, Disastro begins. Throughout, Brendel's playing has a bleak and oblique eloquence, while behind it the discipline to which the sometimes outlandish notes submit confirms his point concerning this music's basically religious inspiration. Max Harrison
Orchestral
Mahler Symphony No 9
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Herbert von Karajan (DG)
Producer: Günther Breest; Engineer: Günther Hermanns
In their 100-year history, the Berliners have made many fine records, but few have matched these in the rigour and splendour of the music-making. Few would have predicted, when Karajan inherited the orchestra, that he would one day record a Mahler Ninth to stand beside the historic recordings of Bruno Walter and Klemperer. Yet, as I remarked in my original review, his understanding of Mahler is now remarkably complete. Textures are lucidly sifted, the central Mahlerian emblems unerringly noted and placed.
Karajan understands the symphony's valedictory nature and the sharpened perspectives which come in the wake of suffering. No conductor has previously achieved so clear a sense of purgatorial chill in the transition which follows the Adagio's hymn-like opening. Yet, complementing the transition's chilly, Zen-like immobility, there is the movement's last great climax, where the Berlin violins seem to throw a bridge of flame across the cavernous spaces beneath.
Originally, I rather understated Karajan's mastery of the second movement, where the progression to nightmare and disintegration is conveyed with a deadly eloquence and rare rhythmic control. The recording has great clarity and beauty, and is finely perspectived, catching in admirable measure the mingled spareness and splendour of Karajan's realization of Mahler's vision. Richard Osborne
Solo Vocal
Liszt Lieder
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau bar Daniel Barenboim pf (DG)
Producer: Cord Garben; Engineers: Jürgen Bulgrin, Karl-August Naegler
The 43 songs here recorded represent over half Liszt's output, and the collection surely well deserves its award. It is chosen with care and discrimination; it brings before the public, in a way which Fischer-Dieskau is the first to admit would not be possible in recital programmes, some music which should certainly be heard and enjoyed more widely; it is marvellously well sung and played; it is excellently recorded. It is, in short, a contribution to knowledge and enjoyment such as could only be possible by means of the gramophone.
Some of the songs will, of course, be known not only to Liszt's particular admirers. Everyone must be familiar with O lieb, even if in its piano manifestation as Liebestraum. Fischer-Dieskau and Barenboim renew appreciation of this beautiful tune, as they also draw appreciation of some of Liszt's other fine melodies. Other songs will be known to those who take any interest at all in Liszt: the Petrarch Sonnets are the crown of this set of records. A good many will be unfamiliar, but with the possible exception of the four Victor Hugo settings (which are a trifle scented), it is difficult to question the choice of any song here. Some are astonishingly prophetic, even by Liszt's standards; but never, even at their strangest and most advanced, is the essential lyrical element lost. John Warrack
