Leonidas is named Artist of the Year at the 2014 Gramophone Awards

Leonidas Kavakos has been named Artist of the Year Award at the 2014 Gramophone Awards, at a ceremony at St John’s Smith Square in London this evening. Accepting the award in person, Kavakos also performed at the event, playing Tàrrega Recuerdos de la Alhambra. He also played solo Bach in the BBC Radio 3 In Tune studio today, when the Award was announced.

This Award was introduced in 2010 and is the only Gramophone Award to be decided by public vote internationally. Click here for the list of nominees for the prize. The Previous winners of this prestigious award are Alison Balsom, Joseph Calleja, Gustavo Dudamel and Joyce DiDonato.

In citation for his nomination for the prize, Gramophone Magazine praised both Kavakos’s recording and performing work: “Kavakos has had quite a year, performing on many of the world’s great stages and with the greatest orchestras to universal acclaim. He recorded Brahms’s Violin Concerto with Chailly and the Gewandhaus Orchestra for Decca (‘evidence of abundant temperament and passion’ according to Duncan Druce last December) and made a superb set, with Yuja Wang at the piano, of the Brahms sonatas – an Editor’s Choice this month. Increasingly seen with a baton in hand, Kavakos has come a long way since taking Gramophone’s Concerto Award back in 1991 for the Sibelius Violin Concerto in its original version for BIS.”

Kavakos’s next appearance in London is a recital of the Brahms sonatas with Yuja Wang at the Barbican Hall on 17 October. Click here for more information.

Image credit: Decca/ © Ben Ealovega.