In preparation for the 2018 Juno Awards, which are coming up on Sunday, March 25, we've been analyzing the four classical music categories.

So far, we've looked at the large ensemble category, the solo/chamber music category and the vocal/choral category. Now, we turn our attention to the nominees in the fourth category, classical composition of the year.

​This year's nominees are:

This is a really strong field comprising many of the compositions that stood out to us in the past year or so. Among this year's nominees, two are first-timers (Rolfe and Vincent Ho) and none has previously won a Juno Award, so the outcome will be especially exciting. There is, however, an omission.

Gary Kulesha's three-movement Lyric Sonata was a highlight from Charles Hamman and Frédéric Lacroix's two-volume Canadian Works for Oboe and Piano, released last June by Centrediscs. We love Kulesha's judicious but effective use of quarter tones in this piece, and were expecting it to get a Juno nod. A two-time nominee in this category (1990 and 2000), Kulesha's day will surely come.

Moving on to this year's field, here's our analysis.

This composition for violin and piano came to us via Duo Concertante's excellent Incarnation, for which it was commissioned. Its structure is episodic: it begins with prayer-like homophony and transitions through a rhapsodic and impressionistic section, followed by highly animated writing that recalls Copland, before both voices recede into a sort of serene symbiosis and eventually float into space. It's the story of two lives intertwined, told in a riveting 13-and-a-half minutes.

Of the five nominees, Alice Ho uses the most economical means for her composition. Will it buy her a piece of Juno history?

Staniland got his first Juno nomination last year for Dark Star Requiem, his chamber opera about the AIDS crisis. This year's nomination is for his ballet, Phi, Caelestis, commissioned by the NAC Orchestra for a choreography by Jean Grand-Maître and released on ENOUNT3RS.

​Staniland constructed his three-movement work using the golden ratio, or Phi. The first movement, Rex, is a churning, hair-raising perpetuum mobile that finally resolves on a protracted C-sharp. There are some effective allusions to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in Styx, the second movement, not to mention beautiful writing for woodwinds. Eden, the third movement, is cinematic and monumental, pitting massive blocks of strings, brass and percussion against fragmented voices, on tape, invoking the "laws of nature" at the piece's core.

Phi, Caelestis is a gorgeous score. But will it score the Juno?

With so many excellent early music specialists in Canada, it's no wonder there's been a proliferation of new music written for them lately. A recent example is Rolfe's 18-minute Breathe, the title track from a Centrediscs album of his new works, performed by sopranos Suzie LeBlanc and Katherine Hill, mezzo-soprano Laura Pudwell and the Toronto Consort under David Fallis.

Understandably, we've been conditioned to associate the sound of recorders and lutes with ancient music, so there's a pleasant cognitive disconnect when you start listening to Breathe, its language and textures at once familiar and new. Rolfe wisely borrows sequences and harmonic gestures from late Renaissance and baroque music and updates them as expressive vehicles for these texts by Anna Chatterton, Hildegard von Bingen and Antonio Scandello.

In Breathe, old meets new. Will Rolfe meet Juno?

Morlock was one of four composers commissioned for the NAC's Life Reflected project that created multimedia portraits of exceptional Canadian women. For her assignment, she wrote My Name is Amanda Todd — a tribute to the girl from Port Coquitlam, B.C., who took her own life at age 15 following years of cyber-bullying. Before her death, Todd spoke out on YouTube against her aggressors.

The piece's slow, contrapuntal intro for strings and glockenspiel at once foreshadows and reflects on what's to come — Morlock says it's "a bit like aftermath." From there, she skillfully whips the orchestra into a frenzy of negative energy (we know where this is leading, it's almost unbearable) that finally — surprisingly — transforms into a powerful, positive and ultimately cathartic dénouement.

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My Name is Amanda Todd is tremendously moving. Will it move the Juno jury?

Vincent Ho has received his first Juno nomination for The Shaman, his concerto for percussion and orchestra that was brought to life so convincingly by Evelyn Glennie, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Alexander Mickelthwate on their Juno-nominated album.

Vincent Ho puts some truly accomplished orchestral writing on display in this piece. The first movement, Ritual, situates the listener in a primordial landscape where elements clash and vie for supremacy. In the second movement, the soloist explores all the expressive possibilities of the marimba (Fantasia) and vibraphone (Nostalgia) and it's amazing. Following an interlude, the third movement, Fire Dance, is so explosive and dangerous-sounding it could score a protracted action sequence from Mad Max.

The Shaman is a tour de force for Vincent Ho. Is the Juno Award within his reach?

Here are our predictions:

It may not have the emotional impact of some of the other nominated works, but for its absolutely dazzling orchestral writing, Vincent Ho's The Shaman deserves to win.

It's impossible not to be moved by Morlock's My Name is Amanda Todd. The Juno will go to her.