The Classic FM Gramophone Awards - often referred to as "the Oscars of the classical music world" - continue to grow in stature and significance, and for 2007 Gramophone has announced a change in the awards process.

From the hundreds of recordings released between June 1 and May 31 the music industry is asked to nominate the discs it wishes to be considered for each Award. This long list is then voted on by panels of specialist critics to produce a short list of six discs per category (these are: Early Music, Baroque Vocal, Baroque Instrumental, Chamber, Choral, Concerto, Contemporary, DVD, Historic reissue, Historic archive, Instrumental, Opera, Orchestral, Recital and Vocal).

At the round two stage, Gramophone critics are asked to reduce these six to one winner in each category. The resulting discs will each receive a Classic FM Gramophone Award (this returns to the original method of making the awards).

Another round which takes into account the voting in the First Round as well as soliciting votes from a smaller panel of critics produces the Record of the Year.

At the Awards ceremony the following awards are presented.

• 15 record awards: one of which will also be
  
• The Record of the Year
  
• Artist of the Year
  
• Lifetime Achievement
  
• Editor's Choice
  
• Special Achievement
  
• An Innovation Award (in association with Classic FM magazine)
  
• Young Artist of the Year (for a musician aged under 30 on June 1)
  
• Record Label of the Year
  

You can check out all of the award winners in the other categories and read their reviews by visiting Gramophone's website and browse through their extensive online database which you'll find here:




Collecting the Albums - During the proccess of collecting these recordings, I've noticed that a few of the original award winning records are no longer easily available. In such cases they have therefore been replaced with a newer release which of course features the very same recording as the original. Same same but different you know. All in all I have collected the albums and their scans from various sources. Most has been ripped and scanned by myself, some has been downloaded getting the music from somewhere and the scans from somewhere else. In other words, one big mix of material forming a great collection.

Available Scans - You'll find that you have the option to download the available scans separately. The links for the scans are found in the same text file as the links for the music itself. You will figure it out I'm sure. If you have better scans than the ones included here, you are strongly urged to upload those and share them with the AvaxHome community. This is particularly necessary with the 1978, 1982 and 1985 award winners.

Reporting Errors - Should you surprisingly find any kind of flaws, errors, typos or anything else about this project that is not amazingly accurate, sublimely beautiful or otherwise close to perfect, please let me know about it. Any kind of feedback is higly appreciated as long as it is kept in a friendly and patient tone of course.

Creating Mirrors - If any of you feel a strong need to create mirrors for the albums in this project I will have to ask you only to do so on filehosts other than Rapidshare and not to present the links to such mirrors in a comment but rather send them to me in a personal message. I will then build them into the main project info with proper credits to the uploader.

But enough said. Let's have a look at those albums shall we?!. And the winner is...