Gramophone Awards 2026: The Winners and the Voice of an Era
Updated: 13 hours ago
 | By Lucy Cheung 08 October 2026 |
The 2026 Gramophone Classical Music Awards were announced in London last night, with German violinist Isabelle Faust taking home both Artist of the Year and the Concerto Award. The Piano Award went to Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and French pianist Bertrand Chamayou for their album Schubert 4 Hands, while French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau won the Instrumental Award for Louis Couperin: The Complete Works and the coveted Recording of the Year, while the public-voted Orchestra of the Year was claimed by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra.
Chamayou, Faust and Alexander Malofeev, who was named Young Artist of the Year, were among those who performed at the ceremony, alongside the Pavel Haas Quartet, winners of the Chamber Award. Sakari Oramo, who accepted the Orchestral Award on stage last night for his recording of orchestral works by Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, recalled his first encounter with her music: “What is this language? This beautiful, poetic music, full of fury and intimacy. It was totally original. It has completely crystallised in our souls. There is still so much more to discover about Grażyna Bacewicz. I’m still trying to understand her as a true musical virtuoso.”
The Riff Magazine will be publishing a series of conversations with this year’s winners, including Leif Ove Andsnes, Bertrand Chamayou and Isabelle Faust.
We begin with Martin Cullingford, Publisher and Editor of Gramophone, reflecting on this year’s winning recordings and artists. This is Cullingford’s third year overseeing the Gramophone Awards. Among the most significant changes he has witnessed, he says, is that “recordings of any kind now have a chance of winning.” There is no longer a fixed idea of what kind of record can win and what might only receive a nomination or special mention. If a recording inspires people, it has a chance to win—whether it’s an outstanding contemporary work, an ambitious project, or repertoire from the established canon.
Martin Cullingford in Conversation (Part II):
“The canon itself is being reconsidered”
LC=Lucy Cheung
MC=Martin Cullingford
On Isabelle Faust
LC: Let’s begin with Isabelle Faust. She has previously received a Gramophone Award. Why do you think her artistry continues to receive such recognition? What is it about her playing that continues to set her apart?
MC: I think when you hear her play something, it feels so deeply thought through, and so individual. But she also has an extraordinary sound. It’s amazing colour and strength. Even when it’s pianissimo, there’s a sort of colour and strength to it. I think every time you hear her play, there’s just this whole sense that she deeply believes in what it is that she’s playing. That seems like an obvious thing to say, because all musicians should believe in what they’re playing, but it really does come across.
When she’s collaborating with others, I suspect she’s one of those people who inspires those around her and creates a wonderful sense of music-making. She also just explores all sorts of repertoire, whether it’s Bach or Ligeti, as in this year’s case, or concertos. And I suspect there’s a desire not to be pigeonholed in terms of repertoire, so she draws on all sorts of different kinds of music-making. Probably everything informs everything. And she’s one of those musicians who, I think, future generations will look back on her work, her legacy and her recordings, and realise what a central figure she was to our classical music era.
On Leif Ove Andsnes and Bertrand Chamayou: Schubert 4 Hands
LC: Schubert is one of the most recorded composers. This year, Bertrand Chamayou and Leif Ove Andsnes’s Schubert 4 Hands won the Piano Award. Do you think the two pianists discovered something new in these familiar works that made the Gramophone Awards judges feel there was a reason for listeners to hear them again?
MC: I particularly wanted to talk about this recording because it’s just so wonderful. What struck me most is the wonderful rapport and relationship between the two performers. What you hear is not two pianists each playing separately, but music that is woven together between them.
These works depend on the interaction between the performers, and when that interaction really happens, the listening experience itself becomes enormously enjoyable.
It’s a little bit like chamber music. You’re hearing collaborative music-making, but there are few enough people involved that you can really sense the communication between them. I think this kind of music ultimately depends on whether the performers can play it in a way that is enjoyable, moving or compelling. They’re both extremely fine pianists who normally perform largely as soloists, so to be able to work with another equally outstanding soloist must be a very enjoyable thing for them as well.
On The New Generation
LC: Every year we see new young musicians emerging. What are you looking for in the next generation of classical musicians? Beyond technical ability, how can you recognise that a young musician has a voice of their own?
MC: I think what we’re looking for is someone who plays something that feels natural to them. They’re not trying to play like the generation above them, and they’re not trying to be unusually wilful or different just for the sake of it. What matters is that everything they do feels natural, as though this is simply how they understand and express the music.
Obviously, you can’t categorise all young musicians in the same way, but there is something interesting about the current generation. We were talking earlier about how musical interpretation changes at different stages. In the middle of the 20th century, there was a grand romantic style of playing. Then the period movement came along, and some people approached music with quite a purist attitude. Of course, that also brought completely new ways of listening, whether to Bach’s vocal music or his instrumental music.
And the influence of the period movement didn’t remain confined to Baroque music. It also encouraged musicians to approach composers such as Mahler and Ravel with a greater awareness of historical performance practice. I think the younger generation now seems freer. They can draw on all these different traditions and apply them in whatever way they feel is right for the music, rather than feeling that they have to follow one particular set of principles. They’re actually drawing on the recording tradition of the whole of the last century.
When I talk to young musicians about the recordings they’ve listened to, I’m often surprised by how many of them go back to very early recordings. I think one reason may be that there’s a sense of freedom in some of those early performances. Recording is obviously an extraordinary thing, but it can also create an idea of the “perfect performance”, with performers and listeners gradually developing expectations of a certain standard. I don’t know whether that idea is completely right, but it seems like an interesting theory worth exploring. Young musicians today are very accustomed to broadcasting, streaming and live streaming, and they know that their performances may be preserved forever. Perhaps because of that, they don’t constantly think that what they are doing at this particular moment is going to become some kind of permanent benchmark. They can feel freer to be music-makers, without feeling that everything they do now has to become some kind of benchmark that will last forever. I think perhaps you can hear some of that change in the playing of this generation.
Another important aspect is that they are exposed to a much wider range of music than previous generations were. I recently interviewed the composer Colin Matthews, who talked about his involvement in a London Symphony Orchestra project for young composers. I asked him whether there was anything about these young composers that surprised him, and he said their frame of reference was completely different from that of his generation. When people of his generation mentioned Stockhausen, everyone would normally know who they were talking about. But today, young people may not have the same awareness of certain composers who were once regarded as important. In the past, generation after generation of musicians seemed to take it for granted that they needed to know the established musical canon. But now that canon itself is being reconsidered, and perhaps everything is up for grabs. I think that makes young musicians more interesting as well.
On Gramophone, Streaming and the Future of the Awards
LC: Today, almost every recording is available through streaming. What can a specialist publication such as Gramophone provide that algorithms and playlists cannot?
MC: This is something we think and talk about almost every day as a publication. For most of our history, Gramophone was essentially a buying guide for records. Until about ten years ago, our role was very clear: how much money does the reader have to spend this month, and how can they spend it wisely on records they might like?
That has completely changed. Perhaps now we need to help readers think more consciously about how they spend their time listening. We still review records, and I think there is still value in listening carefully to a recording, thinking about what the artist has done, and trying to understand and communicate those artistic choices.
What I hope the magazine can do now, at every stage, is help readers listen in a more informed and prepared way, and therefore get more out of the experience. In fact, the streaming era puts us in quite an interesting position, because comparative listening has always been an important part of Gramophone’s tradition.
If you’re listening to a Beethoven concerto, you might want to know how it differs from other recordings. In the past, we could write about those comparisons in the magazine, but readers would then have to go to a record shop and buy different recordings to make the comparison themselves. Now you can simply open a streaming service and hear all sorts of different versions.
So we’re always trying to put recordings into a broader context, encouraging readers to think about what they’re hearing, and also encouraging them to go towards music they might not otherwise have chosen to explore. Now you can follow an unexpected path of discovery without having to spend much, if anything, extra. If you told the founders of Gramophone that today people could press a button and almost instantly hear virtually every piece of music that has ever been recorded, it would still sound extraordinary, even now. But that is the reality. And in the past, people’s access to a lot of repertoire depended not only on whether a recording existed, but also on whether there was an orchestra in their city performing that music. Now you can hear almost anything at almost any time. That has changed our relationship with music.
LC: And at a time when people are increasingly accustomed to listening to music one track at a time, why do you think the album still matters?
MC: Because classical music is generally not a short-form art form. Of course, you can listen to a Schubert impromptu, a nocturne or an étude on its own and get an enormous amount of satisfaction from it. But these pieces are often also part of a larger whole. When you hear them within a broader context, you realise that their meaning goes beyond the individual piece itself.
An aria can of course be listened to on its own, and it can be incredibly beautiful. But it is also part of an unfolding musical journey within a Passion or an opera. When you hear it as part of the whole, the work takes on a richer meaning.
Another interesting phenomenon is the renewed interest in vinyl. I think that reflects something important. In an age when you can press a button and immediately hear any piece of music, people still want to sit down and listen consciously, and listen through a work in its entirety. Vinyl of course has its own ritual. You have to put the needle down and then listen all the way to the end. When you develop the ability to concentrate on listening for a longer period of time, you can really experience the kind of feeling that a Mahler symphony can create at the end, something that goes beyond everyday experience. Or take Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, or Elgar’s First. When the theme returns at the end, it seems to gather everything that has come before into that moment, and it’s profoundly moving. If you haven’t listened to the whole work as a whole, it’s difficult for that experience to happen in quite the same way.
LC: Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the Gramophone Awards. Looking back over the past half-century, what role do you think these winning recordings have played in shaping our understanding of great recordings and in reshaping our understanding of music history? At the same time, how has the idea of what makes a “great recording” changed? And what do you most hope the Gramophone Awards will continue to preserve in the future?
MC: It’s quite moving to think about some of those important moments in the past. For example, The Tallis Scholars won the 1987 Record of the Year with a recording of music by Josquin. Looking back, the fact that an early-music recording could win such an important award as Record of the Year, and receive such prominent recognition on the awards stage, was really significant.
Today, if a recording like that won, we probably wouldn’t find it particularly surprising.
I remember about thirteen years ago, when I first became editor, Vox Luminis won with a recording of Schütz. At the time, nobody really thought of it as a record that was too obscure or difficult to understand. Now we have a much more open understanding of what kind of music can win an important award.
| Writer |
Comments