Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Oliver Knussen, Jamie Barton, Bertrand Chamayou and Hanna Hipp have all won prizes at the 2018 BBC Music Magazine Awards. 

The Elliott Carter: Late Works album recorded by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Oliver Knussen together with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group was honoured with the Jury Award. The album includes Carter’s Dialogues and Dialogues II, Soundings, Interventions, Two Controversies and a Conversation for piano, percussion and chamber orchestra, Instances and Epigrams, with the latter work being dedicated to Pierre-Laurent Aimard. The album also features Colin Currie (for whom Two Controversies was commissioned), Isabelle Faust and Jean-Guihen Queyras. Upon the release of the disc in August 2017, Gramophone commented: ​“There are unlikely to be any better discs of contemporary music this year.”

Jamie Barton topped the Vocal Award category for her debut recital disc All Who Wander (Delos), accompanied by Brian Zeger. Following her widely-acclaimed debut at Wigmore Hall in 2016, the disc features a selection of songs by Mahler, Dvořák and Sibelius.

Bertrand Chamayou accepted the award in the Chamber Music category Debussy – Sonatas & Trios (Warner). Marking the centenary of Debussy’s death on 25 March 1918, the album centres on the three sonatas the composer wrote during World War I, patriotically asserting himself as ​‘Claude Debussy, musicien français.’ Alongside Bertrand Chamayou, five leading French musicians are featured on this album: Emmanuel Pahud, Renaud Capuçon, Edgar Moreau, Gerard Caussé and Marie-Pierre Langlamet.

The Opera category was awarded to Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg and John Nelson for their performance of Berlioz’s Les Troyens (Erato/​Warner Classics). The recording features Hanna Hipp in the role of Anna.