The Shortlist for this year’s RPS Music Awards has been announced.

► Click here to see the full Shortlist

The RPS Music Awards, presented in association with BBC Radio 3, are the UK’s highest recognition for live classical music. This year’s awards celebrate outstanding achievement in 2014.Making the cut are leading lights from the world of classical music, including: international singing stars Swedish soprano Nina Stemme, English tenor Mark Padmore and German baritone Christian Gerhaher; conductors John Eliot Gardiner, Andris Nelsons and Vasily Petrenko; percussionist Colin Currie, violist Lawrence Power and violinist James Ehnes; composers Hans Abrahamsen, Julian Anderson, John Casken, Graham Fitkin, Simon Holt and Liza Lim.

There’s some welcome good news for English National Opera, shortlisted in the Opera and Music Theatre Category, and double nominations for Oxford Lieder Festival, the Royal Opera House, and for the Arditti Quartet in the year it celebrated its 40th birthday.

There’s also a strong showing for younger artists: all the solo instrumentalists and three quarters of the conductors featured on the shortlists are under 40.

A ground breaking music project for people living with dementia, a new work for 1000 ‘shouting’ voices premiered in a Birmingham shopping center, and music making in a multistory car park in Peckham also get the nod, just a few of the extraordinarily imaginative, participatory events to make the shortlists.

John Gilhooly, RPS Chairman, comments:

“This is an incredibly exciting time for classical music in the UK and these shortlists show the wonderful diversity of musical activity nationwide and a common purpose that drives the very finest work. This is an outstanding line-up of forward-looking, clear-sighted musicians and organisations that ceaselessly strive for excellence and have a deeply ingrained desire to communicate to as many people as possible. This communication, whether in concert halls, or in schools and the community or through new media, is of crucial importance to the future of classical music and it is thrilling to see it so passionately articulated by both our major music institutions and at a local level. “

► Click here to see the full Shortlist
► Download the press release

31 March 2015