Daniel Barenboim heads up RPS classical nominations

Barenboim's Wagner Ring Cycle is one of several nominations for 2013's musical anniversary celebrations

Conductor Daniel Barenboim, composer Peter Maxwell Davies and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato are among the nominees for this year's Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards.

Barenboim, nominated for his complete Wagner Ring Cycle from the BBC Proms, competes against fellow conductors Riccardo Chailly and Andris Nelsons.

Singer DiDonato faces soprano Barbara Hannigan, German baritone Michael Volle and English tenor Mark Padmore.

The winners will be revealed on 13 May.

The awards celebrate outstanding achievement in classical music during 2013 and several of the year's big musical anniversary celebrations are rewarded with nominations.

They include the bicentenaries of Wagner and Verdi and and the centenary of Benjamin Britten's birth.

Britten100, Aldeburgh Music's Friday Afternoons - which saw 100,00 young people across the world singing his songs - and Opera North's Festival of Britten are among the events recognised.

There are double nominations for Scottish Opera, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the London Contemporary Orchestra, which is just six years old.

The young artists category pits two of the UK's brightest young sopranos - Sophie Bevan and Ruby Hughes - against Russian-German pianist Igor Levit.

Here is a full list of the nominations:

A Midsummer Night's Dream was part of Opera North's Festival of Britten

Audiences and Engagement

• Britten100 (Britten-Pears Foundation)

• 50 Venues for 50 Years Tour (Scottish Opera)

• Musical Rumpus (Spitalfields Music)

Chamber Music and Song

• Champs Hill

• Elias Quartet

• Oxford Lieder Festival

Chamber-Scale Composition

• Richard Baker: The Tyranny of Fun

• Harrison Birtwistle: The Moth Requiem

• James Clarke: 2013-V

• Peter Maxwell Davies: Oboe Quartet

Concert Series and Festivals

• London Contemporary Orchestra

• The Rest is Noise (Southbank Centre)

• Tectonics Festival

Conductor

• Daniel Barenboim

• Riccardo Chailly

• Andris Nelsons

Creative Communication

• Chopin Saved My Life (Oxford Film and Television for Channel 4)

• John Eliot Gardiner: Music in the Castle of Heaven: A Portrait of Johann

• Sebastian Bach (Allen Lane)

• Tom Service: A guide to contemporary classical music (The Guardian)

• TouchPress: classical music iPad apps

Ensemble

• Academy of Ancient Music

• BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

• London Contemporary Orchestra

• London Philharmonic Orchestra

Instrumentalist

• Mahan Esfahani

• Patricia Kopatchinskaja

• Nikolai Lugansky

Large-Scale Composition

• Sally Beamish: Flodden

• George Benjamin: Written on Skin

• David Matthews: A Vision of the Sea

Learning and Participation

• Breath Cycle - Singing and Cystic Fibrosis (Scottish Opera)

• Friday Afternoons (Aldeburgh Music)

• Imago (Glyndebourne)

Opera and Music Theatre

• Longborough: Ring Cycle

• Opera North: Festival of Britten

• Royal Opera: Elektra

• Welsh National Opera

Singer

• Joyce DiDonato

• Barbara Hannigan

• Mark Padmore

• Michael Volle

Young Artists

• Sophie Bevan

• Ruby Hughes

• Igor Levit