Classical Music magazine reports that Austrian composer and conductor Friedrich Cerha has won the 2012 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. The prize, often called the Nobel Prize of Music, honors a composer, performer, or musicologist who has made a distinguished contribution to the world of music. The cash award is 200,000 Euros ($263,000).
Cerha is best known for completing Berg’s unfinished opera Lulu to produce the version that is most staged today. His own work includes substantial music for the stage, such as Baal (based on a play by Brecht), chamber works and orchestral pieces, notably the seven-part Spiegel.
In 1958, shortly after attending the summer school at Darmstadt, he founded the new music ensemble die Reihe with fellow composer Kurt Schwertsik.
Previous winners of the prize include Benjamin Britten (1974), Olivier Messiaen (1975), Elliott Carter (1981), Witold Lutosławski (1983), Karlheinz Stockhausen (19896), Leonard Bernstein (1987), Luciano Berio (1989), Hans Werner Henze (1990), György Ligeti (1993), Harrison Birtwistle (1995), György Kurtág (1998), and Henri Dutilleux (2005).
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Extra note: I heard Baal at the Wiener Staatsoper in the early 1980s. The star of the production was Theo Adam. I had a standing room ticket and after the opera finished, there was a lot of applause, and I lost count of how many times that Adam came out to take a bow. The (I assume) students next to me just would not stop applauding and yelling their approval. This must have gone on for 20 to 30 minutes. Everyone in the opera house was gone except these students, and the usher came up to kick them out. If they had not done so, the students would have continued applauding.
James Bash writes articles for a variety of publications, including magazines such as Opera America, Open Spaces, Opera, MUSO, International Arts Manager, American Record Guide, Symphony, Opera Canada, and PSU Magazine. The newspapers include Crosscut, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Oregonian, The Columbian, The Portland Tribune, The Register-Guard, and Willamette Week. James has also written a number of articles for the Oregon Arts Commission and contributed articles to the 2nd edition of the Grove Dictionary of American Music. James was a fellow to the 2008 NEA Journalism Institute for Classical Music and Opera. He is a member of the Music Critics Association of North America (mcana.org) and lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Kathy.
bob priest on Oregon Symphony’s Carin Miller Packwood discusses the crazy reed-making process for bassoons
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good to see herr cerha given 200K+ worth of props. he is a major figure in europe & virtually unknown here in the states.
i hope that changes as he has some very potent works – the “spiegel” series is particularly compelling.