What happened at the 56th GRAMMY Awards?

Over the few days following the primetime television broadcast of the 56th GRAMMY Awards, opinions on how Beyoncé danced (debates still raging over her as a WOC feminist since her unexpected album release), how Katy Perry dressed (decrying her performance of witchcraft and demonic glorification), how Macklemore sang (whether he is simply another example of appropriating black culture) and the marriage ceremonies that accompanied his and Ryan Lewis' "Same Love" (while LGBT people still fight over whether we should be happy to have straight supporters or yelling at them because we should be judged on the basis of our humanity and not because some heterosexual person is saying we just want to be treated like them), and Taylor Swift. Because it always seems to be about Taylor Swift.

I have stayed out of entering on any side of these debates, as I see the popular music industry as entertainment. We all enjoy and are entertained by certain things--different movies, books, foods, plays, art, and music. It is not my place to say what is for someone else to enjoy as entertainment. And sometimes we ascribe even higher value to popular music.

• To some, Beyoncé is the ultimate example of a successful, beautiful, in-charge, lives-her-life woman of color.
• To some, Natalie Grant's early departure from the audience was an affirmation of religious convictions
• To some, Taylor Swift. Because it always seems to be about Taylor Swift.

I like what I like. You like what you like. Sometimes we like the same things, and that's cool. Sometimes we don't like the same things, and that's cool, too.

So rather than posting, liking, and sharing articles, blog posts, and Buzzfeed lists about someone's opinion of what they like or didn't like from the show, how about we look at a few things that were nowhere to be seen on primetime and have been largely overlooked: the classical categories.

Don't. Groan.

I hear you starting to.

There are some really great moments in the classical categories this year. 

Best Engineered Album, Classical, Winter Morning Walks. Featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw and the combined Australian Chamber Orchestra and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Upshaw also won Best Classical Vocal Solo for her performance on this album. Both are deserved wins. The sound of the album is wonderful. The clarity of all the instruments comes through and the balance is fantastic. Upshaw shines as she deftly handles all of the nuance and emotion from the original poems and presents them full of the passion, despair, longing, and joy they posses. AND, as of that wasn't enough for this little album, composer Maria Schneider won Best Contemporary Classical Composition for Winter Morning Walks! It's seriously a spectacular work, performed beautifully, and engineered exceptionally well. Check out a little trailer for the album here.

Best Orchestral Performance, Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4. Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra. Simply marvelous. The energy of this performance leaps through the speakers. Whatever your position on the recently ended 15-month lockout, this album captured a wonderful moment for the orchestra and its former-but-maybe-he'll-return conductor, Osmo Vänskä. I hope he does return for the sake of their future plans to record more Sibelius symphonies.

Best Opera Recording, Thomas Adès' The Tempest. The Metropolitan Opera won this category for the 3rd year in a row, and for the 3rd year in a row the recording is a DVD produced during their movie theater live-streaming events. It's really good. It's the Met. Hopefully they can overcome falling ticket sales and find a sustainable fiscal path forward. 

Best Choral Performance, Arvo Pärt's Adam's Lament. Pärt is equally at home writing for instrumental or vocal groups. His compositional style is truly his own. The winning performance, though for choral performance, features a wonderfully supportive orchestra. Just take a listen for yourself.

Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance, Roomful of Teeth. ROOMFUL OF TEETH. Seriously people, if you have not heard them before, you simply must check out this album. In particular I recommend Caroline Shaw's "Partita for 8 Voices" (this was released as an EP, but also appears on this winning album--although under the name "4 Pieces" and the movements presented out of order and with other compositions between the movements). You can currently stream the entire album--for free--from the homepage of Roomful of Teeth website. I do highly suggest purchasing a copy however, because it is wonderful and you'll feel good supporting their future endeavors.

OK... so, hopefully you've made it this far... I am, after all, a percussionist, and this year's Best Classical Instrumental Solo went to Dame Evelyn Glennie and her performance of John Corigliano's Conjurer - Concerto For Percussionist & String Orchestra. Corigliano said "When asked to compose a percussion concerto, my only reaction was horror."
How's that for a reaction from a celebrated and respected composer?! Fortunately, Corigliano seems to have overcome his initial misgivings, and this work is actually a great addition to the percussion concerto repertoire. The arsenal is a bit large--including calling for a coconut--which puts it out of the grasp of most percussionists outside of academia or who don't belong to an orchestra. It is a full-fledged concerto, lasting 30-some minutes and is presented in 3 movements: wood, metal, and skins. Each movement is prefaced by a cadenza, including one that opens the work. It is exciting and intense. There are some calmer, introspective moments in the second movement, but for the most part, it is Dame Glennie at full-throttle. 

I hope you might take the time to enjoy some of these moments in classical music from the last year. Whether you simply like them (or not), or find a deeper connection to the compositions presented here (or not), is up to you to decide. I won't judge you either way.

 

Full list of nominees below. Not just the winners deserve all the attention.

73. BEST ORCHESTRAL PERFORMANCE

WINNER - Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4
Osmo Vänskä, conductor (Minnesota Orchestra)
Label: BIS Records

Atterberg: Orchestral Works Vol. 1
Neeme Järvi, conductor (Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra)
Label: Chandos

Lutosławski: Symphony No. 1
Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor (Los Angeles Philharmonic)
Track from: Lutosławski: The Symphonies
Label: Sony Classical

Schumann: Symphony No. 2; Overtures Manfred & Genoveva
Claudio Abbado, conductor (Orchestra Mozart)
Label: Deutsche Grammophon

Stravinsky: Le Sacre Du Printemps
Simon Rattle, conductor (Berliner Philharmoniker)
Label: EMI Classics

74. BEST OPERA RECORDING

WINNER - Adès: The Tempest
Thomas Adès, conductor; Simon Keenlyside, Isabel Leonard, Audrey Luna & Alan Oke; Jay David Saks, producer (The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra; The Metropolitan Opera Chorus)
Label: Deutsche Grammophon

Britten: The Rape Of Lucretia
Oliver Knussen, conductor; Ian Bostridge, Peter Coleman-Wright, Susan Gritton & Angelika Kirchschlager; John Fraser, producer (Aldeburgh Festival Ensemble)
Label: Virgin Classics

Kleiberg: David & Bathsheba
Tõnu Kaljuste, conductor; Anna Einarsson & Johannes Weisser; Morten Lindberg, producer (Trondheim Symphony Orchestra; Trondheim Symphony Orchestra Vocal Ensemble)
Label: 2L (Lindberg Lyd)

Vinci: Artaserse
Diego Fasolis, conductor; Valer Barna-Sabadus, Daniel Behle, Max Emanuel Cencic, Franco Fagioli & Philippe Jaroussky; Ulrich Ruscher, producer (Concerto Köln; Coro Della Radiotelevisione Svizzera, Lugano)
Label: Virgin Classics

Wagner: Der Ring Des Nibelungen
Christian Thielemann, conductor; Katarina Dalayman, Albert Dohmen, Stephen Gould, Eric Halfvarson & Linda Watson; Othmar Eichinger, producer (Orchester Der Wiener Staatsoper; Chor Der Wiener Staatsoper)
Label: Deutsche Grammophon

75. BEST CHORAL PERFORMANCE

WINNER - Pärt: Adam's Lament
Tõnu Kaljuste, conductor (Tui Hirv & Rainer Vilu; Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir; Sinfonietta Riga & Tallinn Chamber Orchestra; Latvian Radio Choir & Vox Clamantis)
Label: ECM New Series

Berlioz: Grande Messe Des Morts
Colin Davis, conductor (Barry Banks; London Symphony Orchestra; London Philharmonic Choir & London Symphony Chorus)
Label: LSO Live

Palestrina: Volume 3
Harry Christophers, conductor (The Sixteen)
Label: Coro

Parry: Works For Chorus & Orchestra
Neeme Järvi, conductor; Adrian Partington, chorus master (Amanda Roocroft; BBC National Orchestra Of Wales; BBC National Chorus Of Wales)
Label: Chandos

Whitbourn: Annelies
James Jordan, conductor (Arianna Zukerman; The Lincoln Trio; Westminster Williamson Voices)
Label: Naxos

76. BEST CHAMBER MUSIC/SMALL ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE

WINNER - Roomful Of Teeth
Brad Wells & Roomful Of Teeth
Label: New Amsterdam Records

Beethoven: Violin Sonatas
Leonidas Kavakos & Enrico Pace
Label: Decca

Cage: The 10,000 Things
Vicki Ray, William Winant, Aron Kallay & Tom Peters
Label: MicroFest Records

Duo
Hélène Grimaud & Sol Gabetta
Label: Deutsche Grammophon

Times Go By Turns
New York Polyphony
Label: BIS Records

77. BEST CLASSICAL INSTRUMENTAL SOLO

WINNER - Corigliano: Conjurer - Concerto For Percussionist & String Orchestra
Evelyn Glennie; David Alan Miller, conductor (Albany Symphony)
Track from: Corigliano: Conjurer; Vocalise
Label: Naxos

Bartók, Eötvös & Ligeti
Patricia Kopatchinskaja; Peter Eötvös, conductor (Ensemble Modern & Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra)
Label: Naïve

The Edge Of Light
Gloria Cheng (Calder Quartet)
Label: Harmonia Mundi

Lindberg: Piano Concerto No. 2
Yefim Bronfman; Alan Gilbert, conductor (New York Philharmonic)
Track from: Magnus Lindberg
Label: Dacapo Records

Salonen: Violin Concerto; Nyx
Leila Josefowicz; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor (Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra)
Label: Deutsche Grammophon

Schubert: Piano Sonatas D. 845 & D. 960
Maria João Pires
Label: Deutsche Grammophon

78. BEST CLASSICAL VOCAL SOLO

WINNER - Winter Morning Walks
Dawn Upshaw (Maria Schneider; Jay Anderson, Frank Kimbrough & Scott Robinson; Australian Chamber Orchestra & St. Paul Chamber Orchestra)
Label: ArtistShare

Drama Queens
Joyce DiDonato (Alan Curtis; Il Complesso Barocco)
Label: Virgin Classics

Mission
Cecilia Bartoli (Diego Fasolis; Philippe Jaroussky; I Barocchisti)
Label: Decca

Schubert: Winterreise
Christoph Prégardien (Michael Gees)
Label: Challenge

Wagner
Jonas Kaufmann (Donald Runnicles; Markus Brück; Chor Der Deutschen Oper Berlin; Orchester Der Deutschen Oper Berlin)
Label: Decca

79. BEST CLASSICAL COMPENDIUM (I know, I didn't say anything about these, but I didn't get to listen to them all)

WINNER - Hindemith: Violinkonzert; Symphonic Metamorphosis; Konzertmusik
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
Label: Ondine

Holmboe: Concertos
Dima Slobodeniouk, conductor; Preben Iwan, producer
Label: Dacapo Records

Tabakova: String Paths
Maxim Rysanov; Manfred Eicher, producer
Label: ECM New Series

80. BEST CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL COMPOSITION

WINNER - Schneider, Maria: Winter Morning Walks
Maria Schneider, composer (Dawn Upshaw, Jay Anderson, Frank Kimbrough, Scott Robinson & Australian Chamber Orchestra)
Track from: Winter Morning Walks
Label: ArtistShare

Lindberg, Magnus: Piano Concerto No. 2
Magnus Lindberg, composer (Yefim Bronfman, Alan Gilbert & New York Philharmonic)
Track from: Magnus Lindberg
Label: Dacapo Records

Pärt, Arvo: Adam's Lament
Arvo Pärt, composer (Tõnu Kaljuste, Latvian Radio Choir, Vox Clamantis & Sinfonietta Riga)
Track from: Arvo Pärt: Adam's Lament
Label: ECM New Series

Salonen, Esa-Pekka: Violin Concerto
Esa-Pekka Salonen, composer (Leila Josefowicz, Esa-Pekka Salonen & Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra)
Track from: Out Of Nowhere
Label: Deutsche Grammophon

Shaw, Caroline: Partita For 8 Voices
Caroline Shaw, composer (Brad Wells & Roomful Of Teeth)
Track from: Roomful Of Teeth
Label: New Amsterdam Records