New York, NY (Top40 Charts) One of today's most compelling classical music recording projects was doubly honoured yesterday, Sunday, February 10, at the 61st GRAMMY Awards. The
Boston Symphony Orchestra and their
Music Director,
Andris Nelsons, took the coveted GRAMMY Award for "Best Orchestral Performance" for their double-disc Deutsche Grammophon set of Shostakovich's Symphonies Nos. 4 & 11. The release, recorded live at
Boston Symphony Hall as part of their critically acclaimed Under Stalin's Shadow series, also received the award for "Best Engineered Album, Classical" in recognition of its superlative sound quality.
"It is a huge honour for the
Boston Symphony Orchestra, myself and the whole team behind this project with Deutsche Grammophon to win two Grammys for the latest instalment in our Shostakovich cycle," observed Maestro Nelsons. "This is the third time the cycle has won the 'Best Orchestral Performance' award."
Nelsons and the Orchestra are no strangers to success at the Grammys. They won the 2016 "Best Orchestral Performance Award" with the first release in Under Stalin's Shadow, featuring performances of Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony and music from his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and repeated the achievement the following year with their album of the Fifth, Eighth and Ninth Symphonies, and the Suite from Hamlet.
Since the Grammys began in 1959, only one other cycle devoted to the symphonies of a single composer has received awards on multiple occasions.
Dr
Clemens Trautmann, President, Deutsche Grammophon, highlighted the Yellow Label's sense of gratitude to the musicians and production team for their outstanding work. "We are thankful, overwhelmed and proud that the groundbreaking Shostakovich cycle by
Andris Nelsons and the
Boston Symphony Orchestra has received its third and fourth Grammy Awards," he noted. "These tremendous accolades underline the extraordinary quality not only of the interpretations, but also of the production by Shawn Murphy and Nick Squire. It is already fair to say that this Shostakovich cycle is evolving into the ultimate reference recording. Congratulations to everybody involved in this great team effort."
The next instalment in the
Boston Symphony Orchestra's Shostakovich cycle with
Andris Nelsons, set for international release on February 22, couples the composer's Symphonies Nos. 6 & 7 in company with his incidental music to King Lear and Festive Overture.
