The 2024 BBC Music Magazine Awards are writ large in this issue, in fact. We’ve got interviews with the winners across all nine categories, including violinist Bomsori Kim (for her part in an incredible album of concertos by Nielsen), guitarist Sean Shibe (whose album Profesión won our Instrumental Award), and countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński, winner of the Vocal Award for Beyond, his album of early Baroque Italian cantatas, songs and opera extracts.

We’ve also got a big interview with organist, conductor and social media sensation Anna Lapwood, whose energetic and effervescent championing of classical music (and of her instrument in particular) made her an easy choice for our Personality of the Year.

Elsewhere this issue, composer Anna Clyne tells Claire Jackson about the joys of bringing together the worlds of music and art, while for this month’s Building a Library Terry Blain enjoys the triptych of snapshots that is Charles Ives’s Three Places in New England.

We’ve got a very entertaining article (with some great photos) from writer and Blue Badge Guide Rick Jones, who vividly follows the walk taken across Essex by composer Gustav Holst – a walk that provided the inspiration for the composer’s best loved work, The Planets. Meanwhile, Michael White heads back to 1920s London, where William Walton announced his arrival with the challenging, groundbreaking Façade; and the legendary Kronos Quartet celebrate their 50th birthday by sharing a few memories with Simon Broughton.

• The Kronos Quartet featured in our list of the greatest string quartets of all time

Our Composer of the Month is Isaac Albéniz. Though famous for his depictions of Spain, Albéniz was in fact a truly cosmopolitan composer, as Jessica Duchen reveals. And, talking of travels, this month’s Musical Destination is Verbier, Switzerland, where Michael Church finds breathtaking scenery and some of the world’s best musicians looking in for the annual music festival.

Click here to access the inlay for this month’s cover CD.