The view from . . . Salzburg 2 -- Klaus Huber nets $120,000 composer prize

Klaus Huber, (left) 83, an individualist composer whose interests were multicultural long before such encounters were fashionable and whose composition students have included some of the top names in international contemporary music, has been awarded one of the world's richest music prizes.

The state of Salzburg, home to the Salzburg Festival, the Mozarteum University and Foundation, and the mountains and lakes that fill The Sound of Music, named Huber Thursday as the recipient of the 2009 Salzburg Music Prize/International Composition Award.

The prize is worth €80,000, or $120,000, and also allows its recipient to select a young composer for an Advancement Award of €30,000 Euros ($20,000). Huber selected a reclusive French-Armenian protégé, Franck Christoph Yeznikian, 39, for that prize. Established during the 2006 Mozart Year to highlight contemporary musicmaking as well as the historical, the first Salzburg Music laureate was Italian iconoclast Salvatore Sciarrino, now 61, whose work is the subject of a retrospective series at this year's Salzburg Festival, "Kontinent Sciarrino."

The award was to be given every three years, but state government representatives also announced this week that it will become a more frequent bi-annual one and will be formally coordinated with the new Salzburg Biennale of contemporary music set to launch in March of next year. As a result, the lead award will drop to €60,000, or $90,000, starting in 2011.

Candidates for the lead prize must be significant and still active composers who also have strong involvement with teaching and society at large.  The award is open to composers regardless of nationality or place of residence.

Huber, whose works are rarely played in the United States, was born in Berne, Switzerland, in 1924 and studied violin with Stefi Geyer and composition with Willy Burkhard in Zurich in the 1940s and '50s. After establishing himself as a composer on the European scene in the late 1950s, he taught in Lucerne and Basel before beginning a long career teaching in Freiburg, Germany. His students have included such internationally prominent composers of the next generations as British-born Brian Ferneyhough (left), Germany's Wolfgang Rihm, and Japan's Toshio Hosokawa.

Sciarrino, who chaired this year's jury which also included German radio and festival producer Harry Vogt and conductor Sylvain Cambreling, told me "Huber's influence as a mentor and teacher is remarkable and remarkably varied. And unlike many composers today, he is a true personality of culture, combining so many areas of interest, knowledge, and concern."

Huber's works range from chamber music (he is championed by Britain's Arditti Quartet) to oratorios to opera and are frequently integrated with the laments of Soviet-era Russian dissident poetry, Christian theology, Sufi mysticism, and Arabic musical practices.

The composer, who now divides his time between Bremen, Germany, and a village in Umbria, Italy, is also highly regarded as a technical craftsman, a scholar of early and Baroque music, and for being politically éngagé -- he is a longtime associate of Ernesto Cardenal, the former NIcaraguan Sandansita, and has set poems and writings of Palestinian and Iranian authors as well as the great Russian-Jewish poet Osip Mandelstam, who died in Stalin's camps in 1938.

The lively and vigorous Huber told a press conference in his Swiss-accented German that despite the heaviness of many of his topics there is a need for "a certain lightness in living life." With a hearty laugh he reminded his listeners, "The cork always floats!"

Huber and Yeznikian's compositions, along with Arabic music, will be featured during one of the four long weekends of the new Salzburg Biennale in March 2009. Other featured composers and areas will be Swiss-Austrian Beat Furrer and flamenco, American Steve Reich and Balinese gamelan, and Toshio Hosokawa and music of Japan. The new festival was founded by Hans Landesmann (left), former concerts director and business manager of the main Salzburg Festival.