Friedrich Cerha in Salzburg, August 4, 2010 -- photo: apa
Composer Friedrich Cerhahas been one of the great forces in Viennese music since the 1950s – writing, experimenting, commissioning, presenting, and conducting compositions; preparing editions in and founding an early ensemble for early music; and doing the same with works of the Second Viennese School: If he had done nothing else in his long and active life than complete (1962-1978) the orchestration for the third act of Alban Berg’s 1929-1935 opera Lulu, enabling the full work to be heard for the first time at last in 1979, he would have a permanent place in history. (This year's Salzburg Festival, which is not involved in the State Prize, is presenting a new production of Lulu through August 17. I'll see it tonight.)
But as a fascinating and iconoclastic composer himself, Cerha was born too late in a city and country once synonymous with new music but which from the Anschluss through postwar reconstruction and beyond no longer cared about such things. Presented today with the third Salzburg State Music Prize – his award, dated 2011, comes with €60,000, about $80,000 – the 84-year-old artist told a press conference on the Monchsberg, “The prize comes too late.”
Reminding both the presenters and the public that (in my approximate English paraphrase), “for 50, 55 years I worked through my youth and career and Austria showed me only its hostility and icy rejection. Now I have more awards and honors than I can count. But," he added with a wry smile, "whatever other debilities age has caused in me, I still have a healthy vanity -- so I’m happy to accept the prize.”
The Vienna-based Kairos label has just issued the world première recording of his landmark 90-minute Spiegel [Mirror] I-VII, written at the beginning of the 1960s but not performed in full until 1972, along with recordings of 1988’s Monumentum and Momente of 2005, with Sylvain Cambreling, Dennis Russell Davies, and Cerha himself conducting major new music orchestras of Baden-Baden/Freiburg and Vienna on a 2-CD set. In an accompanying detailed booklet, 18 (!) composers from Boulez to Lachenmann to Kurtág to G. F. Haas and beyond express their excitement at hearing the work in full due to this project.
Elena Mendoza
A younger composer in their ranks is Elena Mendoza, born in Seville in 1973, trained in Germany, and based in Berlin. She received the Salzburg State’s sort of up and comers "Promotion Prize" of €20,000, about $26,500, and a commission for the 2013 Salzburg New Music Biennale. Kairos has brought out her work as well, on a 2008 CD. Jurors for both prizes were Heike Hoffmann, the new artistic director of the Salzburg Biennale, conductor Johannes Kalitzke, and critic Julia Spinola, critic with the prestigious German newspaper, the FAZ.
The 2011 Biennaleis set for March 3 to 27. The first recipient of the prize, established in the Mozart year 2006, was Salvatore Sciarrino of Italy. The second winner, two years ago, was the Swiss Klaus Huber.
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