NEWS AND LINKS: Esa-Pekka Salonen wins 2012 Grawemeyer Award for his Violin Concerto

By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News
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When Esa-Pekka Salonen stepped down as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009, it ostensibly was to devote more time to composing. His output has been pretty meager in the last two years (just two short pieces) but Salonen has won the 2012 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his Violin Concerto, which was premiered during Salonen’s final weeks as LAPO music director that spring. The award, which includes a $100,000 cash prize, is one of the most prestigious in classical music.

The official release from the university is HERE Mark Swed has an article in the Los Angeles Times HERE. Among other things, Swed notes that the L.A. Phil becomes the only orchestra to have commissioned and premiered two Grawemeyer Award compositions (Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs in 2005 was the other) and Salonen is the only conductor to have led the first performances of two winning scores (Neruda Songs and his own concerto, which featured Leila Josefowicz as soloist).

When the Violin Concerto was premiered in April 2009, I wrote that it was “a stunning violin concerto, brilliant played by 31-year-old Leila Josefowicz, who was born in Toronto but grew up in Los Angeles and studied with Ronald Lipsett at The Colburn School.” (My entire review is HERE).

For what it’s worth I actually thought Salonen’s Piano Concerto, written in 2007, was a better piece but both are terrific. They joined a list of notable Salonen compositions that included LA Variations (written in 1996) and Wing on Wing, which was composed for the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2004.
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.