Sir Simon Rattle, Berlin Philharmonic, and Berlin Radio Chorus Win Second Grammy Award With EMI Classics Recording of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms
Sir Simon Rattle, Berlin
Philharmonic, and Berlin Radio Chorus Win Second Grammy Award With EMI Classics
Recording of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms – Their Second in “Best
Choral Performance” Category
For the second consecutive season,
Germany’s great Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Rundfunkchor Berlin
(Berlin Radio Chorus) under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle have taken a
Grammy Award for “Best Choral Performance,” this time for their EMI Classics
recording of Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. Only last year, this same group of
performers took the Grammy in the same category for Johannes Brahms’s German
Requiem,
sharing the award then, as now, with Simon Halsey, choral director of the
Rundfunkchor Berlin.
The Symphony of Psalms is one of three
Stravinsky symphonies recorded by the Berlin Philharmonic and released by EMI
Classics last year, the others being Symphony in Three Movements and Symphony in C. Sir Simon Rattle, since 2002 the
Principal Conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker (the orchestra’s German
name), commented proudly on behalf of all the artists involved on the honor of
this second award:
“The collaboration between the Berliner
Philharmoniker and the Rundfunkchor Berlin shows the strength and depth of Berlin’s
artistic institutions. I am
thrilled that for the second time the Grammy Awards have recognized what
can be achieved by such a friendly partnership. And I am happy also for Stravinsky, whose magnificent
symphonies deserve to be better known.”
The most recent EMI Classics disc from
Rattle and the Berliners is a coupling of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie
fantastique with the composer’s “lyric scene”, La mort de Cléopâtre, featuring
mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, which was released just last month; a disc of works
by Hans Werner Henze will be re-issued in February as part of the label’s 20th
Century Classics series.
National Academy of Recording Arts
and Sciences (NARAS)
“Grammy” Award 2009 for “Best Choral Performance”*
Stravinsky:
Symphony Of Psalms
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Rundfunk Chor
Berlin
Sir Simon Rattle, conductor; Simon Halsey, chorus
master
EMI Classics
*Awarded
to the Choral Conductor and to the Orchestra Conductor
For
further information contact:
Glenn
Petry, 21C Media Group: (212)
625-2038, [email protected]
Mariko
Tada, EMI Classics: (212)
786-8964, [email protected]
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– February 11, 2009