Höller wins Grawemeyer Award for Sphären

German composer York Hoeller wins Grawemeyer Award (AP) – 7 hours ago

FRANKFURT — York Hoeller, a German composer who spent five years composing his orchestral work "Sphaeren," received the 2010 Grawemeyer Award for music composition.

Hoeller composed the piece — "Spheres" in English — from 2001-2006.

Marc Satterwhite, a University of Louisville music professor who directs the award, called it "magnificently scored, using a large orchestra to generate colors ranging from the most delicate to the most overwhelming. (It) grips you viscerally from the first bars and never lets up."

The prize was announced Monday.

The piece, among 136 entries considered for the $200,000 (euro134,066) prize, debuted in 2008. The six-movement, 40-minute piece was performed by the WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne. It will be released on compact disc in April 2010.

The Grawemeyer Foundation at the University of Louisville awards $1 million each year — $200,000 each for works in music composition, education, ideas improving world order, religion and psychology.

Awards founder Charles Grawemeyer — an industrialist, entrepreneur and University of Louisville graduate — wanted to reward powerful ideas or creative works in the sciences, arts and humanities.

SO, if I wrote a composition of a programmatic nature where the program explored education, ideas improving world order, religion, and psychology, would I win $1Million if I won in all categories?

:hmmm:

SO, if I wrote a composition of a programmatic nature where the program explored education, ideas improving world order, religion, and psychology, would I win $1Million if I won in all categories?

:hmmm:

Depends. Shlock doesn't win, of course. :P

Depends. Shlock doesn't win, of course. :P

In a perfect world sure.

But this is all nothing but a more elaborate lottery, as are all these contests.

Well, Grawemeyer is pretty prestigious.

No award is perfect and this one too has received serious criticism.

Sphären will be released on CD in April 2010 by German label NEOS. I presume this will be a performance by Semyon Bychkov and WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, who premiered the work in 2008.