Grammophon Award of The Year

Magdalena Hoffmann’s debut Deutsche Grammophon album, Nightscapes (“a delightful recital” – The Whole Note), earned the artist a 2022 Opus Klassik Young Talent of the Year award for her performances of works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. And Gramophone wrote: “Hoffmann’s legerdemain still dazzles. … I find her balance of songful lyricism and inexorable forward motion especially impressive”. For her second DG recording, Fantasia, the harpist has travelled further back in time to focus on the music of the Baroque period. Here she showcases her instrument in a selection of fantasias and preludes originally written for keyboard or lute by Johann Sebastian Bach, his sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, and his contemporaries Handel and Weiss.

Myung-Whun Chung is one of the leading conductors of his generation. Also a prize-winning pianist, he is particularly noted for his interpretations of the music of French composer Olivier Messiaen. There has rarely been as talented a group of siblings as Myung-Whun and his two older sisters, cellist Myung-Wha Chung (born 1944) and violinist Kyung-Wha Chung (born 1948). Myung-Whun made his performing debut as a pianist in Seoul at the age of 7. At 8, he flew to Seattle, WA, to begin his American musical studies.

After his critically-acclaimed and award-winning 'lieder albums' with pianists Jan Lisiecki (Diapason D'Or, Edison Klassiek Winner) and Seong-Jin Cho (Limelight's 2021 Vocal Recording of the Year) baritone Matthias Goerne concludes his DG lieder trilogy with DG exclusive artist Daniil Trifonov. With this album, Matthias Goerne explores the art song from a metaphysical perspective. In these visionary meditations by Brahms, Wolf, Berg, Schumann and Shostakovich, Goerne and Trifonov's intense, intuitive partnership opens our ears to the awe-inspiring yet consoling voice of the prophets. 'Goerne's forceful vocal stature offers a potent counterpart to Trifonov's elegant flexibility. A great occasion in which two strong individualists interacted with total unanimity.' (Spiegel recital review)

Soprano Ann Monoyios is a versatile singer who has performed repertory from the early Baroque to the twentieth century. She is best known for her participation in "original" or "period" style performance with such artists as Gustav Leonhardt, Franz Brüggen, Christopher Hogwood, John Eliot Gardiner, William Christie, Philippe Herreweghe, and Reinhard Goebel. She has also toured with Canada's leading period music organization, Tafelmusik.