Elizabeth Kramer

@arts_bureau

Rihm write “IN-SCHRIFT 2” for the 50th anniversary celebration of the Berlin Philharmonic’s hall designed by Hans Scharoun.

Rihm, contemporary music’s most prolific composer, has written more than 400 works that are widely performed in Europe.

Rihm’s work has been peformed in the United States by the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra and Alarm Will Sound and at the Juilliard School.

A 15-minute orchestral piece written by German composer Wolfgang Rihm to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Berlin Philharmonic’s iconic concert hall has won the 2015 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition.

Rihm, 62, wrote “IN-SCHRIFT 2” as a commission for the concert hall anniversary celebration concert in October 2013 that made imaginative use of the space. The concert hall designed by Hans Scharoun was one of the first 20th century venues to feature a central stage surrounded by audience seating. He will receive $100,000.

Marc Satterwhite, a professor of composition at the School of Music and the director of the Grawemeyer music prize, called the piece contemplative and inventive in how it uses the dark sounding instruments in the orchestra — including six clarinetists and three percussionists placed in different corners of the audience area — and special writing for sound. The piece features no flutes, violins or violas.

“I love the colors of it and it has a very convincing emotion arc. It’s not what you call a cheerful piece, but it engages both the intellect and the emotions from the very beginning. It draws you in and never lets you go,” Satterwhite said.

Reached by phone in Germany Sunday, Rihm said he was happy his work has received the award but that he only gives interviews by fax.

At the time, Rihm did not have access to a fax machine as he was in Berlin. Last weekend at the annual Berliner Festspiele, Rihm’s piece “Jagden und Formen” was performed with choreography by Sasha Waltz.

Rihm, who maintains a position leading the Institute of Modern Music at the Karlsruhe Conservatory of Music and lives in his native city of Karlsruhe near the French border, has written nearly 400 compositions. He also is frequently called the most prolific composer in contemporary music having written orchestral works, operas, choral music, chamber pieces and works for famous soloists including German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter.

“I’m only a composer. I only want to write my music,” Rihm said by phone when asked to answer more questions about the award and his work.

Many critics have ascribed labels to his work including “neo-Romantic” and “German Expressionist,” with others write that his music is difficult to categorize. Rihm has cited Morton Feldman, Wilheim Killmayer, Luigi Nono, Arnold Schoenberg and Edgard Varese among his primary influences.

While his work is performed widely throughout Europe, it has had few performances in the United States. Notable ensembles that have performed his work include the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York-based chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound. In 1987, the Juilliard American Opera Center presented the New York premiere of his one-act chamber opera “Jakob Lenz”

In 2013, the composer became a commandeur in the Ordre des Arts and des Lettres, a French society, a distinction he holds along with Germany’s Distinguished Service Cross and Grand Cross of the Order of Merit with Star.

He has received the Royal Academy of Music Bach Prize, the Prix de Composition and Musical de la Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco, the Ernst von Siemens Music Award and the Robert Schumann Prize for Poetry and Music, which he received in November. Universal Edition publishes his music.

H. Charles Grawemeyer, a Louisville native and a 1932 graduate of UofL's Speed Scientific School, established the awards at the university in 1984 with a $9 million endowment.

The music prize was established in 1985, and the winners are chosen from nominations from around the world. Grawemeyer died in 1993.

Reporter Elizabeth Kramer can be reached at (502) 582-4682. Follow her on Twitter at @arts_bureau.