The Huelgas Ensemble wins the prestigious Gramophone Award 2023

On Thursday evening, the 4th of October, the prestigious Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2023 were presented in London.  The world-renowned music magazine Gramophone issues the awards each year for the best CD recordings of the year in the field of ‘classical’ music. The CDs are rigorously selected by the specialist music press.

This year there were hundreds of entries, and only 11 CDs received an award. In the ‘Early Music’ section, the Gramophone Award 2023 was unanimously awarded to the Huelgas Ensemble for its recording of this year's album of two polyphonic masses by Ludwig Daser (c.1515-1589), a quasi-forgotten composer.

An excerpt from the jury's assessment speaks volumes :

“… This is a rare case where composer and executants have unlocked each other in award-winning fashion. Over decades, Paul Van Nevel has had a remarkable capacity for persuading us that we are not looking hard enough. His Huelgas Ensemble always reminds us that choral polyphony is much more about how we react to an individual musical personality than about the reputation of the figure in question…”

A delegation from the Huelgas Ensemble, along with Sony Classical director Michael Brüggemann, accepted the award amid an ovation from the seven hundred-strong specialised audience.

You can find the complete Gramophone award article in the AWARDS section of our website.

And there is a nice photo of Paul Van Nevel holding the award in the GALLERY section of our website.