Yes indeed. The very first Nereffid's Guide Awards appeared in January 2008, long before I started this blog, at a time when I was heavily involved in the community of users of eMusic. The aim of the awards back then, and of the second awards the following year, was to highlight the best classical albums that were available on eMusic. It was only with the 2009 Awards that I decided to expand coverage to all releases. The results of the 2007 and 2008 Awards were available on my old Nereffid's Guide web site, which no longer exists. But rather than simply repost that information I thought it would be good to produce new versions that reflect the full spectrum of those years' releases. I don't know why I ended up being surprised that it took far more effort than I was expecting.
Anyway, here's the new-and-improved 2007 Awards. They're very different: aside from the fact that they cover far more releases (including, now, the major labels), there are some changes from the original award categories, some changes to the sources of reviews, and a total overhaul of the scoring system. The end result is that, of the 17 releases that originally won awards, only - ahem - 2 of them were victors this time round, in the 14 categories I'm using now (I've left out the Archive and Reissue categories here).
Scroll down the page to see each award in turn, or click on these links to jump to the relevant post:
Living Composer - Vocal
This has been an intriguing exercise because, unlike any other time I've produced these Awards, here I'm dealing with recordings that we've had many years to live with. Looking at the winners now in hindsight, by and large they seem to have held up very well. Maybe not all of them can be, or ever will be, considered timeless classics, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if, like me, you found a handful of your favourites here. I hope that a similar situation will apply as we look back on the later Awards. Then again, this year's opera winner just recently appeared in BBC Music Magazine's "Building a Library" feature as "one to avoid".
Critics, eh?
This has been an intriguing exercise because, unlike any other time I've produced these Awards, here I'm dealing with recordings that we've had many years to live with. Looking at the winners now in hindsight, by and large they seem to have held up very well. Maybe not all of them can be, or ever will be, considered timeless classics, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if, like me, you found a handful of your favourites here. I hope that a similar situation will apply as we look back on the later Awards. Then again, this year's opera winner just recently appeared in BBC Music Magazine's "Building a Library" feature as "one to avoid".
Critics, eh?
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