Paul wins Classical Album of The Year.

Good on him. There is a life after rock.
From the BBC;

Sir Paul McCartney has won the best album award at the Classical Brits for his fourth classical album Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart).
The former Beatle saw off competition from artists including Sting, Katherine Jenkins, Alfie Boe and Bryn Terfel.

The award was voted for by Classic FM listeners and readers of its magazine.

"If you'd told me when I was a little boy growing up in Liverpool I'd be at the Albert Hall receiving this, I wouldn't have believed you," he said.

Lukewarm reviews

"How proud my mum and dad would have been," he added, before jokingly singing an opera-style high note and leaving the stage at London's Royal Albert Hall where the ceremony took place.

The Berlin Philharmonic and its conductor Sir Simon Rattle won the classical recording of the year award, receiving the honour for Holst's The Planets.

Russian soprano Anna Netrebko was named singer of the year

Album of the year was the only award voted for by the public, with all the other awards chosen by classical music experts and critics.

Sting had been shortlisted for his lute album Songs From the Labyrinth.

But he was beaten by Sir Paul, who began writing Ecce Cor Meum in 1997 but had to halt work after the death of his first wife Linda the following year.

The oratorio in four movements with English and Latin lyrics was recorded last year at Abbey Road Studios in London and premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in November.

But it received lukewarm reviews from classical critics. BBC Music Magazine described the work as "agreeably inoffensive but in no way sharply distinctive".

Lifetime achievement

Gramophone Magazine said it was a "pseudo-classical project... the result is a creakily Victorian four-parter, both short-winded and constipated, hopping disconcertingly from one episode to the next in shades of grey".

Sir Paul's next pop album, Memory Almost Full, is out in June