“Vertigo” by C. Bertrand, best album of 2020.

The jury of the German Record Critics’ Awards (PdSK) has announced the winners for 2020. In the category of contemporary music, the best recording of last year was Vertigo by Christophe Bertrand, a three-CD box set of more than three and a half hours, released by the Bastille Musique label, which includes the complete instrumental works – twenty-two pieces – of the late French composer Christophe Bertrand, who committed suicide in 2010 at the age of 29.

The ambitious work is performed by the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne – which acts as producer of the recording -, the Zafraan Ensemble and Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin and the piano duo Grau-Schumacher, conducted by up to six different conductors: Premil Petrović, Victor Aviat, Brad Lubman, Peter Rundel, Baldur Brönnimann and Emilio Pomàrico. The box set includes an 80-page trilingual booklet (in English, French and German), with texts by the German journalist and music critic Dirk Wieschollek, as well as an interview with the Zafraan Ensemble, founded in Berlin in 2009.