It was announced today, Monday, April 12, that ASCAP composer Jennifer Higdon has won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The Pulitzer jury awarded Higdon’s “Violin Concerto” (Lawdon Press), “a deeply engaging piece that combines flowing lyricism with dazzling virtuosity.” The piece premiered on February 6, 2009, in Indianapolis, Indiana.
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Smarting from his rejection by British orchestras, the conductor Alex Prior went off to conduct the Seattle Symphony Orchestra in January, having beaten 180 applicants for the post. Nothing too remarkable about that until you realise he is 17 and travelled there with his mother.

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Debut with the Seattle Symphony and Gerard Schwarz: “This young woman could outplay the devil… Yang’s splash on our coast was stunning… (she) played with fire… a perfect platform for her talents.” Seattle Times, May 2009

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Vienna, which never accepted him as one of its own, is paying homage to Gustav Mahler. As head of the opera from 1897 to 1907, Mahler had outraged the city by denouncing its traditions as mere laziness. When he was conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, he updated Beethoven’s scores. As a composer, he unsettled audiences with subversive symphonies of painful ambiguity.

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Today is the 317th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach’s birth. Morning Edition host Bob Edwards uses the occasion to discuss Bach’s passions — in life and music — with Miles Hoffman, a commentator on NPR’s Performance Today and artistic director of the American Chamber Players.

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At 16, he was ‘the pianistic find of the century’. There followed a sparkling two decades before his right hand seized up mysteriously. Now, after a 40-year battle to regain mastery of the keyboard, Leon Fleisher is headlining next month’s Aldeburgh Festival. Lynne Walker hears his extraordinary story.

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When I was asked 12 months ago by the BBC if I’d be interested in making a film on Henryk Górecki (in Poland) and Arvo Pärt (in Estonia) for their Sacred Music series, I said yes, almost immediately. I’d been very impressed by the first series and liked the idea pairing of two composers writing religious music in the communist Eastern Bloc who have become almost cult figures in our secular age.

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Australians played an important role in bringing to life a rare new symphony from Arvo Part, writes Harriet Cunningham. Silence. It has been a recurring theme in the life and music of one of the world’s most revered composers, Arvo Part.

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If there’s one reason why Samuel Barber should have lived to be 100, it’s the upside-down irony that his monumental New York flop is Philadelphia’s hottest opera ticket.

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In 1961, Pablo Casals played for John F. Kennedy at the White House. The concert could be seen as a symbol of the importance of the arts to the Kennedy administration, or as a gesture of honor to a great cellist.

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