Feats of Enterprise and Ambition

The Grammy nominations in classical music are no longer a stuck record, with the same famous names recurring in quantity. If a trend can be spotted, it is that the recording academy respects work done on an ambitious scale.

For best classical album, the Emerson String Quartet’s boxed set of Shostakovich’s emotionally shattering 15 string quartets and Simon Rattle’s first recording with the Berlin Philharmonic, Mahler’s questing 10th Symphony, are just such ambitious efforts. But three very celebrated pianists are also in contention, with supremely confident and insightful Bach from Murray Perahia, arrestingly original Chopin from Evgeny Kissin and wonderfully vibrant Haydn from Leif Ove Andsnes.

The combination of big-name performers and standard repertory remains an irresistible Grammy attraction--Daniel Barenboim carefully traversing the nine Beethoven symphonies, Valery Gergiev brilliantly conducting Tchaikovsky, or Itzhak Perlman and Martha Argerich playing Beethoven and Franck violin sonatas with sparks flying. On the other hand, the five opera recordings avoid the 18th and 19th century standards altogether, while the big-money singers are relegated to the best vocal category. Bach looms big in 2000 in choral nominations, but then there was a lot of Bach released, commemorating the 250th anniversary of his death.

The Grammys are impossible to pin down when it comes to new music, which ranges from the raw, urban jazz-inspired avant-garde work of Heiner Goebbels to Ned Rorem’s very conservative but devastatingly powerful life-and-death song cycle “Evidence of Things Not Seen.” Equally varied are the nominees for best small ensemble performance, where the range is from Renaissance vocal music from the Spanish Diaspora to 20th century tangos and other South American favorites arranged for a dozen cellos from the Berlin Philharmonic.