British composer wins 50,000 Euro prize
mainBerlin based and busy mostly in Germany, Rebecca Saunders has been awarded the Mauricio Kagel prize for being ‘a persistent seeker in the realms of sound’. She has been composer in residence at the concert halls of Dortmund and Dresden and has achieved one premiere at the BBC Proms (pictured, 2009, by Chris Christodoulou/Lebrecht Music&Arts).
Thank god it didn’t go to Salonen !
Rebecca Saunders is a great choice
Salonen is a hundred times better than she.Listened to her dreadful, boring,would be German avant-garde violin concerto.If it has to be a British Women, Helen Grime would have been a great choice!
One of those women who have picked-up the clichées from half a century ago in an attempt to imitate the ‘groundbreaking, aggressive, transformative’ men who thought, after WW II, they were composers. These postwar ‘explorers’ tried to provoke a ‘bourgeois, conservative audience’ who had ‘wrong ideas about music’ and needed enlightened instruction. That has certainly helped, and by now this type of ‘music’ has become the Biedermeier convention of the Obligatory Modern Piece that occasionally adornes a concert programme. Anybody doubt? Listen to this ‘violin concerto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW4SiJbx2cA
In Germany, this type of ‘music’ is considered a reassuring gesture to the world (as far as the world wants to listen) that the Nazi period has now been overcome, because Hitler loved Wagner and Bruckner.
Thanks John! Nothing else to add….
Bravo Mr.Borstlap!She lived in Germany for too long to be a good composer.Anna Clyne and,or Helen Grime would have been far better choices.They know how to write for an orchestra, brilliant, complex,colourful and harmonically lush and interesting. None of the Donaueshingen crap…
Great choice! She is very talented.
Unlike you – a ‘man’ – who re-cooks cliches ‘borrowed’ from music written 150 years ago.
Actually, it’s 114 years ago and music was much better at the time.
PS As concerning gender: it’s disturbing to see females imitating aggressive males, as if aggressive males are not bad enough. It’s following an image of ‘heroism’, which was attractive when modernism was new and could hope on a future.
What I want to know is, how many women candidates were there, how many made the short list, and how many women were among the judges. 😀
As per http://www.kulturpreise.de/web/preise_info.php?cPath=0_10_13&page=1&preisd_id=20185
Jury 2015: Georges Delnon, Henk Heuvelmans, Louwrens Langevoort, Renate Liesmann-Baum, Elisabeth Schweeger
3 men, 2 women.
Past juries and winners:
2013: Dr. Winrich Hopp, Renate Liesmann, Louwrens Langevoort, Mariette Piekenbrock, Dr. Elisabeth Schweeger
Winner: Michel van der Aa
2011: Dr. Winrich Hopp, Renate Liesmann, Louwrens Langevoort, Mariette Piekenbrock, Dr. Elisabeth Schweeger
Winner: Georges Aperghis
So in the past they had 3 women in the jury, but male winners.
Great jury: no musician on the panel!Ridiculous!But,at least one choice is apt.Michael van Der Aa is a fantastic composer
…minor talent if that….no originality, she delivers to the unwashed what is expected of a “modern” composer ….much having been done before and better ,but she fits the bill
as modern … much sturm und drag meaning nothing . As these things go if she were original to any degree she would never have won a prize .
Presumably, it doesn’t have to be a “British Women,” but was awarded to Saunders for the quality of her music.