The jury of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) of which Papageno is a member has honoured the best classical and contemporary recordings in nearly 20 categories for 2025. The Awards Ceremony and Gala Concert took place at the Tonhalle in Düsseldorf on 19 March.
Commenting on this year’s awards, ICMA jury president Remy Franck said: “Our awards were selected from a nomination list that included 374 releases and a wide range of artists and labels. The list of winners includes established and emerging artists and no less than 17 international labels.
We have once again included the ICMA Classeek Award, which is organised in collaboration with the digital platform Classeek, and we are continuing our long-standing collaboration with the International Music Academy Liechtenstein to promote three young and promising talents together with the Young Artist Award.
Our awards are recognition of outstanding musical achievement. They can bring – and have brought, as many of our previous winners can attest – many benefits to the winners, artists and labels, enhancing reputation and increasing personal motivation.
We are confident that the full benefits of our awards will be felt by all our winners, in a musical environment where revenues from streaming services, for example, are far from rewarding”.
The winners in the main categories are:
- Lifetime Achievement Award: violinist Gidon Kremer
- Artist of the Year: conductor Leonardo García Alarcón
- Young Artist of the Year: cellist Benjamin Kruithof
- Discovery Award: pianist Can Saraç
- Composer Award: Christoph Ehrenfellner
- Publisher of the Year: BR Klassik
- ICMA-Classeek Prize: cellist Ettore Pagano
- Special Achievement Awards: conductor Adam Fischer, pianist Oliver Triendl and the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra
In the audio and video categories, 17 productions were honoured, with artists including Vilde Frang, Unsuk Chin, Anna Gourari, Marin Alsop, Andreas Scholl, Samuel Hasselhorn and many more.
The winners received their awards at the annual awards ceremony, held on 19 March at the Tonhalle in Düsseldorf. The evening also included a gala concert featuring many of the winners, performed by the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra conducted by Adam Fischer and Vitali Alekseenok.
The ICMA 2025 Gala Concert can be watched in the video below. The detailed programme of the concert is available here.
The ICMA brings together leading classical music publications from 19 countries, from Finland to Turkey. The winning recordings are selected in four rounds of secret voting by specialist journalists nominated by the publications.
