Highest cultural award in the Republic – endowed with 30,000 euros.
(Vienna/OTS) – The composer and conductor Gerd Kühr, born in Carinthia in 1952, will receive the Grand Austrian State Prize, as State Secretary for Arts and Culture Andrea Mayer announced today.
“Gerd Kühr is a constant and always exciting voice in Austrian contemporary music. His oeuvre is characterized by an open, always individual sound language. He continually explores the creative possibilities of music; he experiments and explores new worlds of sound. Numerous top-class commissioned works and his multifaceted collaboration with renowned ensembles and orchestras demonstrate Gerd Kühr’s outstanding importance for contemporary music in Austria,” said Art and Culture State Secretary Andrea Mayer.
The Art Senate justified its choice as follows: “His works always reveal a personality that, with its great sensitivity and openness, expresses a commitment to tradition without ever becoming traditionalist, as his gaze is always directed towards new terrain and paths less traveled. With his excellent compositional craftsmanship as a performing musician, his works are also an expression of great independence and freedom.”
The Great Austrian State Prize is the Republic’s highest award for an artistically outstanding life’s work and is endowed with 30,000 euros. The prize is awarded annually without a fixed rotation principle within the categories of literature, music, fine art and architecture. The Austrian Art Senate, which consists of 21 members, nominates an artist from these areas every year. In the music category, the prize was last awarded to the composer and pianist Thomas Larcher in 2019.
Gerd Kühr achieved his international breakthrough in 1988 with the premiere of the opera “Stallerhof”, based on a libretto by Franz Xaver Kroetz, at the first Munich Biennale. Further productions took place in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
At the 2000 Salzburg Festival, Kühr was honored with two portrait concerts in the “Next Generation” series. In 2001/2002 he was “composer in residence” at the Wiener Concert-Verein (chamber orchestra of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra), in 2003 there was a personal performance at the styriarte festival and in 2005 the Gerd Kühr project as part of the steirischer herbst (opening concert in the “musikolog”/ ).
As a conductor and composer, Kühr has made numerous appearances at concerts and opera performances in Austria, Italy, Germany, Russia and Guatemala, as well as radio productions in Vienna, Cologne, Munich, London, Paris, Rome, Moscow and Hong Kong, among others.
Awards include: Austrian Art Prize for Music (2012), Andrzej Dobrowolski Composition Prize of the State of Styria (2014), Large Golden Medal of Honor of the State of Carinthia (2022).
Gerd Kühr (c) Walter Kober
Works (excerpt):
Operas: “Death and the Devil” (1997/99), libretti: Peter Turrini, commissioned by the Vereinigte Bühnen Graz/Styria on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the opera house in co-production with the steirischer herbst festival; “Agleia Federweiß” (2000/01), libretto: Petra Ernst, commissioned by the Deutschlandsberg Youth Music Festival); “Paradiese” (2021), libretto: Hans-Ulrich Treichel, commissioned by the Leipzig Opera.
Commissioned works for orchestras, ensembles, chamber music and choir, performed at Wien Modern, Almeida Festival, Huddersfield Festival, steirischer herbst, musica viva, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and Bregenz Festival, among others.
Orchestral works: including “Lamento e Conforto” (1983), Elegy for large orchestra (commissioned by ORF); “Concertare” (1990/91) for a clarinetist and orchestra (commissioned by ORF for the 1991 Salzburg Festival); “Mundo Perdido” (1992) for chamber orchestra (commissioned by Erste Bank der Österreichische Sparkassen for the Vienna Modern Festival 1992) ; “Movimenti” (2004/06) for violin and orchestra (commissioned by the Vienna Mozart Year 2006) ; “Line Point Surface Space” (2004/07) for orchestra (commissioned by ORF); “Introductio – Meditatio – Magnificat – Epilogus” (2007/08) for high soprano, baritone, choir and orchestra, texts from the Gospel according to Luke, by Rainer Maria Rilke and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (a composition commission from Bavarian Radio); “Música Pura” (2010/11), five movements for ensemble (commissioned by the Essl Collection for the SCHÖMER-HAUS Klosterneuburg) ; “Palimpsest” (1989/90), music for mezzo-soprano, baritone, choir and orchestra based on poems by Erika Burkart and Georg Trakl (commissioned by the city of Zurich).
Vocal works: including “Kein Herbstgedicht” (2003), song for baritone and piano based on the poem of the same name by Hans-Ulrich Treichel (commissioned by the A·DEvantgarde Munich festival), “Now where?” (2011/12), search for traces for speakers, Choir and orchestra on texts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich Heine and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, (commissioned by the Society of Music Friends in Vienna).
Film music: Together with Hans Werner Henze, David Graham and Marcel Wengler, music for the Proust film adaptation “A Love from Swann” by Volker Schlöndorff (1983). In April 2020, Gerd Kühr was scheduled to conduct Ligeti’s Violin Concerto in Graz as part of the “Styriarte”. Due to the Corona crisis, this event could not take place and Kühr wrote a special piece for this special time: “Corona Meditation”. A piece for any number of pianos and for pianists of various artistic levels, to be performed in the space that was open to art at that moment, on the Internet. The performance took place on April 30, 2020 and can be listened to online.
Link:
Gerd Kühr
Gerd Kühr (music austria database)
“I THINK CONDUCTING IS A WONDERFULLY LIVING EVENT.” – GERD KÜHR IN THE MICA INTERVIEW
“INTO THE OPEN” (FOR GERD KÜHR) – COL LEGNO