When Ruth Palmer left music college with no manager, no record deal and no money she refused to give up her dream of becoming a solo violinist.

At a cost of “tens of thousands of pounds”, begged from institutions, businesses and generous individuals, she hired a concert orchestra to accompany her and recorded her favourite piece: Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto.

Her extraordinary determination was rewarded last night at the Classical Brit Awards when she won the Young British Performer prize for the resulting album, beating Nicola Benedetti, the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year in 2004.

She was joined on the winner’s podium by Sir Paul McCartney, whose emotion-drenched tribute to his former wife Linda won him the Best Album award Other winners in the ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall included the Berliner Philharmoniker, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, who won the Classical Recording of the Year award for their interpretation of Holst’s The Planets, and Leif Ove Andsnes, the Norwegian pianist, who was voted the Instrumentalist of the Year.

Benedetti was the biggest loser. The 19-year-old Scottish violin prodigy was nominated in three categories – Best Instrumentalist, Young British Classical Performer and Album of the Year – but won none of them.

Ruth Palmer, 28, has had to wait much longer than her rival for recognition.

She studied at the Royal Academy and the Royal College of Music, with a gap year of one-on-one tuition in Vienna in between. However, when she left the Royal College last year she realised that she needed to seize the moment or lose her chance of becoming a soloist.

“Because a lot of the attention these days is focused on recording artists, rather than just the odd bod who gives a Wigmore Hall debut, I decided I had to make a record,” she said. ”I wanted it to be something I was passionate about, and in which felt I had a lot to say, so I chose the Shostakovich concerto.”

The recording sessions for her album took place at Henry Wood Hall, off Borough High Street in South London, in 2006, accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra. Quartz, a DIY record label, helped with the production, her boyfriend made a film of the process, and she organised the design, sleeve notes and photography herself. Most of the category winners at last night’s ceremony were decided by panels of industry experts and critics but the Album of the Year award was voted for by the readers of Classic FM magazine and Classic FM’s listeners.

In an interview last year McCartney told them about the raw experience of composing Ecce Cor Meum. “My colleague and I remember actually sitting at the keyboard and just weeping when we were doing this piece,” he said.

“It does it to me every time. It was a very, very emotional, very sad time for me, obviously, losing Linda.”

The former Beatle began working on Ecce Cor Meum before Linda McCartney’s death from breast cancer in 1998, abandoned it during his marriage to his second wife Heather and finished it after their separation last year.

The work was commissioned by Magdalen College, Oxford, whose president hoped for “a choral piece which could be sung by young people the world over, in the same way that Handel’s Messiah is”.

The Duchess of Cornwall presented a lifetime achievement award to Vernon Handley, the conductor, who conducted the cellist Natalie Clein in one movement from Elgar’s Cello Concerto.

The ceremony will be shown on ITV1 at 11pm on May 13.

Going solo

David Gray

Dropped by EMI America after three unsuccessful albums the singer songwriter’s self-funded follow-up White Ladder went nine times platinum

Arctic Monkeys

Sheffield teenagers who built massive word-of-mouth support on the internet and through prolific gigging before signing a record deal and making two of the fastest-selling albums in British history

The Crimea

Indie band who were dropped by their record label Warner Music last year after selling 35,000 copies of their debut album. Next week they will become the first band to give away an entire album for free when they launch the self-financed follow-up, Secrets of the Witching Hour. They hope that this will widen their fanbase, enabling them to make more money from touring, licensing deals and merchandising than they would from album sales

Christian Forshaw

Saxophonist who lost a four-album deal when Sony Classics closed, has launched his own label, Integra. Its first release was his own album, Renouncement

Source: Times database

Explore Music

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

• Classical

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010