Barton takes home a total of £20,000 prize money and two Welsh crystal trophies.

She is a great artist, no question, with an imperturbable steadiness of tone, and a nobility of utterance that invites comparison not so much with her contemporaries as with mid-20th century greats such as Kirsten Flagstad or Karin Branzell. Sibelius’s Was it a Dream ideally demonstrated her voice’s generosity and weight. The dynamic control of Je Vais Mourir from Berlioz’s Les Troyens was exceptional. At the song prize final, which I watched on TV, her performance of Unbewegte Laue Luft, marked her out as one of the great Brahms interpreters of our times.

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