Our annual Orchestra of the Year vote, and the months of public discussion leading up to it, has become a highlight of Gramophone’s online and social media year. But aside from the chance to celebrate some of the past year’s finest music-making from a select number of today’s most innovative and exciting ensembles, it’s also an opportunity to step back and ask: what makes for a great orchestra? Gramophone’s particular focus is on recording of course, and so that’s been key in drawing up the list of six ensembles that we’d like to invite you to choose from this year: a significant starting point was, which albums have captured our critics’ imagination, and attracted their most receptive praise, and in many cases earned Editor’s Choices too? But while brilliance before the microphones is a given in making such a shortlist of course, equally important is how the repertoire the orchestras have chosen to record relates to the journey that is currently being taken by the players, their conductors, and in many ways too their audiences.

From Boston to the Baltic Sea via Manchester, we hope that our selection of ensembles will inspire much thought – and most importantly of all, much listening. And when you’ve had time to reflect – and do also look on our social media channels for coverage in coming weeks to help you decide – please head to the bottom of this page and make your choice. The voting closes on August 18. Martin Cullingford

BBC Symphony Orchestra

The BBC Symphony Orchestra is renowned for its ability to bring brilliance to the unknown, contemporary music being a real strength. Recent months have seen it release Anthony Payne’s Visions and Journeys with Martyn Brabbins (NMC, 9/24) and take a trip through a completely diverse ‘Mixtape’ courtesy of Dalia Stasevska (Platoon, A/24). At the heart, however, of the current era’s excellence is the relationship with conductor Sakari Oramo, who last autumn agreed to continue at the helm until 2030, the orchestra’s centenary year, a tenure which will also cover its move from Maida Vale Studios into a new purpose-built home at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. The passion Oramo brings to the ensemble is no better demonstrated than in the forthcoming album of orchestral works by Grażyna Bacewicz, the second in Chandos’s series, and featuring her Symphony No 2, her Piano Concerto (played by Peter Donohoe) and Concerto For Large Symphony Orchestra – characteristically committed advocacy of
(until recently) a relatively little-known voice, and superb music-making.

Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra

Only last month, the Bergen Philharmonic filled the Recording of the Month slot with their extraordinary recording of Salome on Chandos. This followed a spring release of Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem (4/25), and in November we’d praised their recording with James Ehnes in Sibelius (the Violin Concerto and other works). ‘He and Edward Gardner are a meeting of minds and sensibilities …The orchestral detail, both accompanying and soloistic, is ear prickingly "present", revealing inner voices too often covered in recordings of the piece’ wrote Edward Seckerson. The connecting thread is, of course, the conductor praised there, Edward Gardner, whose relationship with the Norwegian players has been one of deep rapport and musical instinct. (They’ve also appeared in our pages with Dejan Lazić in Mozart piano concertos, conducted by Jan Willem de Vriend on Challenge (2/25)). After nine years Gardner has now stepped down – though retains a role as Honorary Conductor – but what a tenure, and this nomination seems a perfectly appropriate way to mark the moment.

Boston Symphony Orchestra

One of the mightiest of American ensembles, the Boston Symphony will likely appear throughout a collector’s shelves, spanning decades. But few projects have been as ambitious – and encompassing – as their complete survey of Shostakovich’s symphonies and concertos (plus his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk). Even on paper it’s a huge endeavour: all 15 symphonies, the concertos for piano, violin and cello featuring such star soloists as Yuja Wang, Baiba Skride and Yo-Yo Ma, the opera, and all now available as a box-set from Deutsche Grammophon. Symphony No 10 was Recording of the Month in August 2015, winning the Orchestral category the following year at the Gramophone Awards. But we’re focused on more recent times, and the partnership with Yuja Wang was an Editor’s Choice just last issue, demonstrating this team’s textural prowess: ‘Andris Nelsons shapes climaxes that are full-bodied yet crystal-clear in every orchestral strand. The gorgeous Andante is a model of suppleness, elegance and flexibility on everyone’s part,’ wrote Jed Distler. Reflecting on the whole set meanwhile, Rob Cowan wrote ‘it’s a cycle that honours the music as music’. An impressive achievement, in Shostakovich's anniversary year.

Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra

Less than a year since Paul McCreesh took the Choral Award with The Dream of Gerontius, in March the superb Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under conductor Nicholas Collon (and with John Finden in the title role) showed that there is another way to explore this music with a validity and impact all of its own. ‘A captivating recording of a complex score,’ wrote Jeremy Dibble, adding ‘the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra justify their reputation’. A few months later, in July, they further bolstered that fame in Sibelius: ‘The searching middle section of the first movement where we are suddenly enveloped in cloud and mist is extraordinarily atmospheric, the solitary bassoon lost in time and space. But then finally comes the majestic sunburst and the subsequent feeling that all nature is dancing,’ wrote Edward Seckerson – and that’s just the first movement of the Fifth Symphony, Christian Tetzlaff later joining them for an impressive performance of his Two Serenades and Two Serious Melodies. Collon – known for his innovative and imaginative work with the Aurora Orchestra – took up the post of Chief Conductor in 2021, the first non-Finn to have done so. The recordings to have emerged since are compelling.

Hallé Orchestra

An orchestra at a point of transition, from the acclaimed tenureship of quarter-of-a-century holder Sir Mark Elder, a conductor who shaped the orchestra into today's formidable and versatile force, to their inspiring new head, Kahchun Wong. From one of the leading established conductors to one of the most exciting emerging ones then, and an organisation that continues to draw on the expertise of both. Wong opened his catalogue with the Hallé with Britten's The Prince of the Pagodas (11/24) – a far-from-obvious choice, and all the better for it, demonstrating his sensitivity to the score’s colours throughout – before following up with a Bruckner Symphony No 9 (6/25) deeply alive to the work’s epic spiritual dimension. To watch him in person is a fascinating insight into how a conductor can shape orchestral texture with almost balletic physicality; the Hallé’s home crowd clearly adore him. And between those two albums, from last year’s label of the year Opera Rara, came a brilliant original edition of Simon Boccanegra under the baton of Elder, the conductor's long-established rapport with his players palpable throughout.

Le Concert des Nations

Jordi Savall is a conductor who has always stood out for forging a career almost unique in its exploration of the meeting point of early music and other cultures, presented in lavish books by his label Alia Vox offering rich context. He's proved equally revelatory in Beethoven. Yet the most recent recording – an Editor’s Choice in June – from his acclaimed orchestra offers something entirely unexpected: the ‘No 0’ D Minor Symphony of Bruckner, and the unfinished by Schumann. (‘Savall gives Schumann’s early symphonic writing a weight, thrust and emotional impact that’s enormously involving,’ wrote Christian Hoskins) . True to form, the playing is historically informed, ideas thought-through and presented with fascinating detail. Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (12/24) was equally a labour of love, poetry and drama beautifully explored through the music-making – ‘a ravishing palette of orchestral colour’ as Richard Bratby put it – with the added dimension of 24 actors speaking the dialogue, and choruses in English and German. Attention to detail, and dedication to their audiences, are as inspiring as always.