Awards Season for PSNY Composers

by Ted Gordon on May 10, 2016, 10:16 p.m.

Four of our PSNY composers—Kate Soper, Timo Andres, Andrew Norman, and Anthony Cheung—have recently been honored with generous and prestigious awards from some of the most well-regarded organizations in America. We're proud that our composers are getting the recognition they very much deserve, and are honored to make their compositions available to the public. 

Timo Andres, well-known for his works for piano, was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for his work "The Blind Banister," a piece for piano and orchestra that reimagines the cadenza in Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto. Andres writes: "the best way I can describe my approach to writing the piece is: I started writing my own cadenza to Beethoven's concerto, and ended up devouring it from the inside out." Starting from a seemingly simple scalar motive, Andres' composition flows like a hand leading itself on a banister in the dark, echoing Beethoven's sense of purpose-driven confidence but in a world of total sound. 

Kate Soper, as we've mentioned on the blog, has recently won the Virgil Thomson Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This marks the second time this young award has been given; Soper's opera Here Be Sirens is now available on PSNY. Check out a highlight reel below: 

HERE BE SIRENS: Highlight Reel from Kate Soper on Vimeo.

And last but certainly not least, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has recently released their 2016 list of fellows, which includes PSNY composers Andrew Norman and Anthony Cheung. The Guggenheim Fellowship is awarded to artists and scholars "who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Norman and Cheung will use their Fellowships to support the composition of new works, and will join the ranks of fellow PSNY Composers Marcos Balter, Richard Carrick, Lei Liang, Keeril Makan, Alex Mincek, and Kate Soper, all of whom have been Guggenheim Fellows in the past decade.  

Anthony Cheung's "Lyra" at the Cleveland Orchestra

by Ted Gordon on March 30, 2016, 12:48 p.m.

Having recently "built a bridge to Beethoven" with the premiere of his new work "Elective Memory" by Jennifer Koh, Anthony Cheung will see another performance of a Beethoven-inspired work: Lyra, which takes a cue from Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, at The Cleveland Orchestra. Cheung, who was named the Cleveland Orchestra's Young Composer Fellow for the 2016-17 season, is in the process of composing a new orchestral work to be premiered in that season; in the meantime, he oversees an encore performance of Lyra, which was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic with assistance from veteran composer Henri Dutilleux.

The Cleveland Classical blog has published a thorough preview of the performance, and Cleveland.com has published a slideshow previewing the work. Listen to the New York Philharmonic's premiere performance here, and check out a performance of Cheung's vis-à-vis, performed by Ensemble Linea, below:

Anthony Cheung Builds a "Bridge to Beethoven"

by Ted Gordon on March 18, 2016, 12:30 p.m.

As early as ten years after his death, Beethoven had already achieved the status of a Greek God. 

In this famous painting from 1840 of Liszt at the piano (joined by Chopin, Berlioz, George Sand, and others), Beethoven's marble bust, floating on top of the piano in a hazy sunset, looks down upon the composers assembled—or perhaps they look up to it. Beethoven's legacy would be felt throughout the 19th century, through the 20th, and indeed is still felt in the 21st. 

The "Bridge to Beetoven" commissioning project, led by violinist Jennifer Koh, has commissioned contemporary composers (including Vijay Iyer, Andrew Norman, and Anthony Cheung) to write works in dialogue with Beethoven, showing his influence on a diverse group of musicians nearly two centuries after his death.



Anthony Cheung's "Elective Memory", written for Koh and pianist Shai Wosner, evokes Beethoven's Opus 96 violin sonata, written in the same year that Beethoven first met with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Cheung writes, 

This is a piece about the selective affinities that Jenny and I share for this particular Beethoven sonata – it is our favorite amongst the cycle – and the elective memories I have chosen to guide my response to it.

Cheung's orchestral work Lyra, which was written partially in response to Beethoven's fourth Piano Concerto, will also see a performance with The Cleveland Orchestra later in the month. You can listen to the New York Philharmonic's premiere of Lyra from their live broadcast here.

"Elective Memory" will be performed, along with the Op. 96 sonata that inspired it, at the 92nd Street Y on March 21st, following its premeire on March 13 at the Kreeger Auditorium in Rockville, MD. Be sure to check out the final installment of the Bridge to Beethoven series, which features new works by Andrew Norman.