THE 35TH ANNUAL GRAMMY AWARDS : CLASSICAL : Awards Pay Homage to Dead

“More music by dead guys” seemed to be the theme of the classical Grammy Awards. We’re used to the idea that most of the repertory comes from the deceased, but this year Leonard Bernstein (d. 1990) and Vladimir Horowitz (d. 1989) captured major awards for performance.

Even the best contemporary composition award went to Samuel Barber (d. 1981), as the voting went retrospective with a vengeance.

Bernstein won the best classical album and best orchestral performance awards (his 15th and 16th) with a just-released 1979 recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 with the Berlin Philharmonic. This at least is a generally well-regarded performance, of prototypal Grammy material by a Grammy favorite.

The same thing is true of Horowitz’s “Discovered Treasures” collection, for which the pianist received his 25th Grammy. He didn’t gain any ground on all-time Grammy champ Georg Solti, however, as the conductor collected his 30th award, for Richard Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten.”

To be eligible for the contemporary composition award, the piece must have been first released on record during the award year, but could have been composed any time in the last quarter-century. Which tells us how Barber’s 1971 “The Lovers” (the Chicago Symphony conducted by Andrew Schenk, also deceased) got into the category, but not why the voters thought it a better example of contemporary composition than Anthony Davis’ powerful and topical opera “X, the Life and Times of Malcolm X” or Witold Lutoslawski’s gripping, visionary Piano Concerto.

Elsewhere the voting went with name recognition. “Kathleen Battle at Carnegie Hall” won the vocal award over Cecilia Bartoli’s stunning “Rossini Heroines” disc and Arleen Auger’s difficult album of Wolf lieder. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma picked up his seventh and eighth awards in the rather lackluster instrumental soloist with orchestra and the chamber music categories.

The choral award, reserved for televised announcement, went to Herbert Blomstedt conducting the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus in Orff’s “Carmina Burana”--an anticipated triumph of popular material from a surprisingly sophisticated field of nominations.