 Pianist Stephen Hough's recording of Tsontakis's "Ghost Variations" on Hyperion Records was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition, and was the only classical recording among "Time" magazine's 1998 Top Ten Recordings.Tsontakis received the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin in 2002, and the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his Violin Concerto No.2 in 2005.