Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Finally Hearing, As Well As Thinking About, The Best Of The Past Twenty-Five Years Of Classical Music Composition

"The Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, one of the richest and most prestigious prizes in the field, will be making a bigger splash than usual this year.

Until now the honoree for a given year was announced late the previous fall with a press release from the University of Louisville (Kentucky), which administers the prize.

But for 2007, the Grawemeyer is coming to Carnegie Hall. This Thursday, March 8, the name of this year's laureate will be announced at a special performance in Carnegie's Isaac Stern Auditorium featuring works by previous Grawemeyer winners. What's more, the amount of the prize has been raised from $200,000 to $250,000." ...

Matthew Westphal "2007 Grawemeyer Award to Be Presented at Carnegie Hall Concert March 8" PlaybillArts.com March 6, 2007

http://www.playbillarts.com/news/article/6117.html

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Grawemeyer Award Concert
The University of Louisville Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble


Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 8:00 PM

The University of Louisville Symphony Orchestra
Kimcherie Lloyd, Conductor
The University of Louisville Wind Ensemble
Frederick Speck, Conductor
Paul York, Cello


KAREL HUSA Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra

And works by [Witold] Lutosławski, Aaron Jay Kernis, Joan Tower, John Corigliano, Krzysztof Penderecki, and [Toru] Takemitsu.

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Professor David Neumeyer's [Univerity of Texas at Austin] fifteen "discussion" pieces:


Bartók, Béla, Fifth String Quartet

Corigliano, John, Symphony no. 1 for orchestra

Crumb, George, Ancient Voices of Children.

Gorecki, Henryk, Symphony No. 3

Herrmann, Bernard, Psycho (1959)

Hindemith, Paul, Symphony in Bb for Band (1951)

Lutoslawski, Witold, String Quartet

Preisner, Zbiegniew, Red (1994)

Prokofiev, Serge, Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 26

Schoenberg, Arnold, Kleine Klavierstücke, Op. 19, nos. 2 & 6

Schwantner, Joseph, And the Mountains Rising Nowhere (1977)

Steiner, Max, Casablanca (1942/43)

Stravinsky, Igor, Symphony of Psalms

Volans, Kevin, White Man Sleeping (1995)

Webern, Anton, Concerto, Op. 24.






















Invisible [to major American orchestras] American Composer Karl Husa.

Recipients of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, 1943-2001.

Photo credit: www.classical-composers.org. With thanks.

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Wednesday, March 7 at 7:00 pm -- LOUIS C. ELSON MEMORIAL LECTURE, Library of Congress

THE CLASSICAL MUSIC "CRISIS" AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
by Joseph Horowitz (no tickets required)

Joseph Horowitz, author of Classical Music in America: A History of Its Rise and Fall (2005) and artistic director of Washington’s Post-Classical Ensemble, traces the decline of classical music in this country and suggests ways to revitalize it. It will be followed by a discussion and Q&A with musicologist Karen Ahlquist, Chairman of the Music Department, George Washington University, and Christina Scheppelmann , Director of Artistic Operations, Washington National Opera. [Corrected from Library of Congress source.]

2 Comments:

Blogger Justa Student said...

Terrific blog! FYI, Christina Scheppelmann is the Director of Artistic Operations for Washington National Opera.

8:27 AM  
Blogger Garth Trinkl said...

Ms Meier, thank you very much for your kind comment and for your important correction, which I have incorporated above.

My error -- both incorrect spelling and title for Christina Scheppelmann, the Director of Artistic Operations-- was based upon material both on the Library of Congress Music Division Website and in the printed 2006-07 Library of Congress Concert and Lecture brochure. I assume it was a rare Library of Congress end of summer error which, unfortunately, did not ever get corrected. Thanks again for pointing this out.

I attended the lecture/discussion last night, and found the presentations by Mr Joseph Horowitz, Ms Scheppelmann, and Professor Karen Ahlquist all to be exceptionally stimulating. I wish that the short lecture and subsequent engaging roundtable would be presented on WETA Television -- if not on nationwide television. Those three presenters were clearly outstanding leaders of Washington's, if not the Nation's, cultural future.

Ms Scheppelmann clearly enunciated the Washington National Opera's trailblazing commitment to American opera, despite the perceived operational difficulties (including some apparent Board resistence) of mounting one American opera every year in a season consisting of only seven staged operas. She also praised the commitment of young American (and world) singers, almost all of whom now have some American operatic arias in their auditioning materials.

My contribution to the evening was to ask whether other American opera houses might be encouraged to follow the Washington National Opera's example, and commit to producing one American opera every season. I also asked whether it was unreasonable to expect that Sharon Percy Rockefeller's Classical WETA-FM, in the Nation's Capital, might not be expected to include 3 to 15% American classical music in their 21 hours of daily Classical music programming.

Always the flaming moderate, I was upstaged by Professer Karen Ahlquist, musicologist and Chair of the George Washington University Music Department, who believed that 50% American classical music content on
Classical WETA-FM, might not be unreasonable.

7:18 AM  

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