Press Releases

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra has been awarded the 2009 Gramophone Award for Best Concerto Recording, for its performances of Britten's complete works for piano & orchestra with pianist Steven Osborne.

The winning recording, conducted by the orchestra's former Chief Conductor (now Principal Guest Conductor) Ilan Volkov, features Britten's Piano Concerto, Diversions for left-hand piano and orchestra, and Young Apollo. The three compositions which comprise Britten's music for solo piano and orchestra constitute a unique, yet still little explored, part of his output.

Steven Osborne's performance of Britten's Concerto with the BBC SSO and Ilan Volkov at the BBC Proms in 2007, laid down a modern benchmark with regards to performance of this music. The final recording also featured the original third movement which Britten discarded in his 1945 revision.

Presented in London, the Classic FM Gramophone Awards are regarded as the world's most influential classical music prize, and are now in their 31st year.

This is the fourth Gramophone Award presented to the BBC SSO and its second consecutive prize; in 2008 it won the best Contemporary Recording Prize for its performance of Jonathan Harvey's Body Mandala; in 1992, the orchestra took the award for Best Concerto Recording, with pianist Nikolai Demidenko, and in 1993 won best Contemporary Recording for James MacMillan's The Confession of Isobel Gowdie. The orchestra was also nominated twice in the concerto category at the 2008 awards.

Director of the BBC SSO, Gavin Reid, said: "This award is a wonderful testament to the achievements of Steven Osborne, Ilan Volkov our friends and colleagues at Hyperion records and of course, the incredible musicians of the BBC SSO."

Notes to Editors

Britten: Complete works for piano & orchestra

Hyperion: CDA67625
Steven Osborne (piano)
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov, conductor
Recorded September 2007
City Halls, Glasgow, Scotland
Produced by Andrew Keener
Engineered by Simon Eadon
Released September 2008

"It's the concerto...that is the real draw here, for Osborne's account has such deftness and wit that its only possible rival on disc is the performance by Sviatoslav Richter with Britten conducting." Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 29 August 2008.

"The rapport between soloist and orchestra is often electrifying, especially in their fervent performance of Young Apollo, and the variations in Diversions (Romance, March, etc) are well differentiated." Matthew Rye, The Telegraph, 6 September 2008.

"Steven Osborne and Ilan Volkov launch into the Piano Concerto's opening Toccata at a headlong pace... For all the remarkable velocity, the playing has weight and incisiveness too, and Osborne's way with the two central movements is equally sure. Diversions... a beautifully devised single-movement set of variations presents Britten's inventiveness at its most elegant. Osborne and the orchestra do this neglected jewel excellent justice." BBC Music Magazine, September 2008.

"...throughout the disc, Osborne and his colleagues make the best possible case for pieces which have tended to be placed on the outer fringes of the Britten canon." Gramophone Magazine, October 2008.

"Osborne exults in Britten's dazzlingly pianistic writing, and we get to hear the original 1938 version of the concerto’s third movement, a dazzlingly beautiful Recitative and Aria...a thrilling disc." Sunday Times.

SD3