Thomas Adès has experienced a meteoric rise to international musical prominence. Since his first public piano performance in 1993 at the age of 22, his versatility as pianist, conductor and composer has inspired comparisons to Beethoven, Mozart, Purcell and Britten. His four-movement, large-scale orchestral work “Asyla” earned him the $200,000 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award […]
Through his opera “Marco Polo,” composer Tan Dun takes his audience along for the explorer’s legendary travels from Italy to China. He also takes the audience on a spiritual quest reflecting the three states of the human being — past, present and future — and the cycle of nature. And he takes the listener on […]
An orchestral work inspired by the poems of a Holocaust survivor captured the 1997 award. British composer Simon Bainbridge intertwined his music with the poetry of Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi in “Ad Ora Incerta — Four Orchestral Songs from Primo Levi,” which was selected from among 181 entries for the $150,000 Grawemeyer prize. The work […]
A concerto written by composer Ivan Tcherepnin for violinist Lynn Chang and cellist Yo-Yo Ma captured the 1996 award. Tcherepnin’s “Double Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra,” a 23-minute work premiered by the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras June 3, 1995, was selected from 173 entries to receive the $150,000 Grawemeyer prize. Tcherepnin described the […]
John Adams “Violin Concerto” was commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestra, the New York City Ballet and the London Symphony Orchestra. The Minnesota Orchestra, under conductor Edo de Waart and featuring violinist Jorja Fleezanis, performed its world premiere Jan. 19, 1994. Composed in three movements, the 33-minute work is a free-flowing showpiece for violin that changes […]
Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu won the 1994 Award for Music Composition for his work “Fantasma/Cantos.” The work was commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corp. for the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra premiered the work Sept. 14, 1991. Takemitsu described the work as being “influenced by Japanese landscape gardens in the ‘go-round’ style. You walk […]
Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and conductor Karel Husa won the 1993 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Husa, the Kappa Alpha professor at Cornell University, won the award for his “Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra.” The work was commissioned by the Frank Kerze Jr. Fund and was premiered March 2, 1989, by the University […]
A Polish composer known for sending moral and political messages through his music has won the 1992 award. Krzysztof Penderecki won the award for his symphonic piece, “Adagio for Large Orchestra.” Commissioned by Radio France and the French secretary of state for the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the work […]
The pain, anger and frustration of watching friends suffer and die of AIDS led to the creation of John Corigliano’s “Symphony No. 1,” winner of the 1991 award. The piece, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony orchestra, premiered March 15, 1990. Corigliano said the composition was inspired by “The Quilt,” an exhibit of thousands of interwoven […]
Flowing instrumental solos combine with tension-building momentum in Joan Tower’s “Silver Ladders,” winner of the 1990 award. The 22-minute orchestral work, commissioned by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Meet the Composer Inc., premiered on Jan. 9, 1987. “Its many upward-moving lines suggest nothing so much as a giant ladder, reaching to the sky and […]