The composer

Lowell Liebermann was born in New York City in 1961. He began piano studies at the age of eight, and composition studies at fourteen. He made his performing debut two years later at Carnegie Recital Hall, playing his Piano Sonata, Op.1, which he composed when he was fifteen. He holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from the Juilliard School of Music. Among his many awards is a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters as well as awards from ASCAP and BMI. Theodore Presser Company is the exclusive publisher of his music.

Mr. Liebermann is one of America’s most frequently performed and recorded living composers. Called by the New York Times “as much of a traditionalist as an innovator.” Mr. Liebermann’s music is known for its technical command and audience appeal. Having written over one hundred works in all genres, several of them have gone on to become standard repertoire for their instruments, including his Sonata for Flute and Piano, which has been recorded over twenty times, and his Gargoyles for Piano, which has been recorded at least fifteen times.

Lowell Liebermann has written two full-length operas, both of which were enthusiastically received at their premieres. His first, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was the only American opera to be commissioned and premiered by Monte Carlo Opera. His second opera Miss Lonelyhearts, to a libretto by J.D. McClatchy after the novel by Nathanael West, was commissioned by the Juilliard School to celebrate its 100th anniversary. Among his orchestral works, Mr. Liebermann has composed two Symphonies – the Second, with chorus, written for the centennial of the Dallas Symphony; a Concerto for Orchestra; three Piano Concertos; and Concertos for many other instruments. In the realm of chamber music, Mr. Liebermann has composed four string quartets – the two most recent for the Ying and Orion Quartets respectively; four Cello Sonatas; two Piano Trios; Sonatas for Flute, Violin, Viola, Flute and Harp; and works for many other combinations. Sir James Galway has commissioned three works from Mr. Liebermann: the Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, the Concerto for Flute, Harp and Orchestra, and Trio No. 1 for Flute, Cello and Piano. Sir James premiered the Flute Concerto in 1992 with the St. Louis Symphony and the double concerto with the Minnesota Orchestra in 1995.

The composer

The work originates and develops from a primitive musical element of four notes which, transformed and combined by various techniques and contrapuntal artifices, gives rise to harmonies, figures, atmospheres and situations which are directly inspired by the poem. ~The work follows the text and consists of a prologue and three memories: In the Prólogo (a sort of initial presage) the expressive emphasis is focused on a single note (D), obsessively repeated, adorned with icy arabesques and prolonged in vanishing resonances, which seems to concentrate on itself the essence of this introduction, in which the “presage” radiates from the chord labelled come un fantasma (like a ghost).

The Primer recuerdo is characterized by a suspended and vanishing atmosphere, frequently cut by violent gestures, till the music leads to a tense and dramatic finale, with sharp clusters and lines.

The Secundo recuerdo has a calmer and ecstatic character, even serene in some moments. The continuous tremolos perhaps allude to the batir de alas (wing beats) in the poem.

The Tercer recuerdo is a phantasmagorical Presto (the musical figures may symbolize the flight of the swallow or the climbing plants quoted in the text), in which the music gets excited and leads through a climax with sonorities more and more violent to the last apex of the piece, which is a thematicstructural synthesis of the previous parts. Here the music releases bright and piercing sonorities which die out in the last, dark silence.

The composer

Kent Holliday is a native of St. Paul, Minnesota. He received a B.S. degree in music and philosophy, a M.A. and Ph.D. in music theory-composition. He worked in Paris, France, at Dartmouth College and the University of New Hampshire, worked with Pietro Grossi on computer music in the Studio di Fonologia S2FM in Florence, Italy, and in 1988 he studied composition on research-leave with Witold Szalonek of the Hochschule der Kunst in Berlin, Germany.

He taught music and philosophy at the University of Southern Colorado and Colorado State University before going to Virginia Tech in 1974, where he still teaches in the music and humanities departments.

The piece

The panel selected Incantations of the Popol Vuh by Kent Holliday as winner of the Barto Prize 2012. The work is characterized by “harmonic and rhythmic freedom” (Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 27, 2012).

The Popol Vuh – sometimes referred to as the Mayan Council Book – is the longest existing poem in any American Indian language. It stands as an extraordinary monument to the accomplishments of a remarkably gifted culture. Its ethical, spiritual, and philosophical themes in many ways underlie the traditions of Native American peoples throughout North and Central America. Just as it is impossible to understand European culture without some background in the precepts of the Bible, it is also impossible to appreciate fully the rich cultural traditions of American Indians without some background in the stories and ideas expressed in the Popol Vuh.

The composer

George King is a Classical and Jazz pianist, composer and musical director. At the age of four he started playing the piano. In 1999, he was awarded a scholarship to study piano, composition and conducting at the Royal College of Music in London. In the following years, he won several prizes, and performed his own compositions in concerts in America and Europe.

The piece

Winner of the Barto Prize 2010 was George King with 6 Etudes for Solo Piano, described as “animated pieces that demand high pianistic skills and use the full potential of the instrument” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 1, 2010).

George King’s 6 Etudes are all concerned with different aspects of piano technique and are mostly literary inspired. They vary in character, from the unrelenting violence of the first etude to the calm serenity of the fourth and fifth. The 6 Etudes are composed as a response to the reluctance of some 20th and 21st century composers to write ‘pianistic’ music for the piano, and are intended to follow the tradition of the piano Etude set by Chopin, Debussy and Ligeti.

The composer

Patricio da Silva studied composition and following his graduate studies, engaged in post-doctoral work in algorithmic composition at Ircam (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique / Musique) in Paris, and during the following year in the United Kingdom. Besides the Barto Prize 2008, Patricio da Silva has won many important awards. In 2011, his guitar concerto was featured on over 250 classical music stations around the world.

The piece

The winner of the Barto Prize 2008 was Patricio da Silva with Three Movements for Piano which is described as a “a true fireworks of youth and strength” (Steinway Magazine, Austria)

The composer

Baker is Professor of Music in Composition at Indiana University in Bloomington, is a recipient of numerous fellowships, grants and awards (both American and European) for his works. At the beginning of the 1991-92 concert season, he was appointed Composer-in-Residence of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, a position he held for eight years. In recognition of his contributions to the St. Louis community during that period, Baker was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 1999.

The piece

The Barto Prize 2006 was awarded to Professor Claude Baker for Flights of Passage, a work based on four poems by Walt Whitman. Critics marveled at the composition as “melted clusters with sensible tone-scapes”.