Our old friend Esa-Pekka Salonen has won the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, one of the most prestigious in classical music, for his 2009 Violin Concerto. The prize comes along with $100,000 cash, which is just as good as money.
I’m happy to say I was at the premiere of the work. My rather breathless review is here, but I guess I was more or less right — it sounded like 100 grand.
The LA Times has details on the award here.
Alex Ross interviews Salonen here.
In its official announcement, the University of Louisville (which hands out the Grawemeyer) calls Salonen’s piece “Violin Concerto” — with the quotation marks. That makes it sound as if Salonen has written an ironic work, but rest assured it’s not.
I wonder if Esa-Pekka drank some of this vodka after hearing the news.
I don’t know who the best composer is, but I know that Esa-Pekka is really hedging when he discusses the ticket prices for orchestras and opera in the USA. He notes that orchestra tickets cost about the same as pop tickets. What he doesn’t mention is that orchestras need subscribers, and that they sell most of their tickets that way, while pop concerts are one-time deals. A subscription for good seats at the Chicago Symphony can cost couple $3000. No one pays that for Madonna. If you don’t buy subscriptions for operas and orchestras it is much more difficult to get good seats.
He also really hedges when discussing how much cheaper ticket prices in Europe generally are, especially for opera.
And he doesn’t mention that Opera houses are everywhere in continental Europe but that the USA only has about 6 real houses and the longest season is 7 months. Compare that to Germany which has 83 *year-round* houses and one quarter the population.
I wish there were more mainstream artists who weren’t willing to give Alex Ross the goody-two-shoes answers he so often goes fishing for. It’s digusting. Artists should have more critical minds, and perhaps a bit more integrity.
That’s odd. This exact comment appears word-for-word on another site with a different name as its author:
http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/11/the-worlds-best-composer-in-2012-is-a-conductor.html#comments
Seems he has a bee in his bonnet.
“A subscription for good seats at the Chicago Symphony can cost couple $3000.”
My seats, up in the balcony of Disney Hall, cost one tenth that. I consider that a pretty good bargain. It’s cheaper to go to the Hollywood Bowl than a movie. Not to mention there’s more free music than you can shake a stick at in SoCal.
Tim, I liked your review of the concert. We were there for the second performance of the concerto. It was a good show. The Ligeti was memorable as well.
I liked Salonen’s programming.