The Foundation - Rodion Shchedrin Chamber Music Award 2006
Rodion Shchedrin Chamber Music Award to Markus Zahnhausen
This is the third time that this award is presented by the International Maya Plisetskaya and Rodion Shchedrin Foundation:
This year's winner of the Rodion Shchedrin Chamber Music Award is the Munich-based composer Markus Zahnhausen (www.zahnhausen.com). The prize will be presented on 16 November 2006 as part of a concert at the Munich Academy for Music and Theatre as a joint event of both the Foundation and the Academy.
Born in Saarbrücken in 1965, the composer and renowned recorder virtuoso will receive the prize for the four chamber music works 'Horns of Elfland' for tenor recorder solo (1999), 'Svireli' for string orchestra and four recorders (2001), 'Stilleben' for string quartet (2003) and 'Bylina' for chamber orchestra (2006). 'Horns of Elfland' and 'Bylina' will be performed at a concert on 16 November. Markus Zahnhausen who also studied Slavonic studies in addition to musicology feels greatly attached to the Russian culture.
Rodion Shchedrin gave the following reasons for his decision in favour of Markus Zahnhausen: 'The compositional œuvre of Markus Zahnhausen focusses particularly on the field of chamber music. As a superb recorder virtuoso, he is thoroughly familiar with the listeners' perception and knows how to rouse an interest in them with a fresh colour and entertain them by skilfully developing the original thematic idea. Knowing exactly the possibilities of the instruments for which he composes, Zahnhausen demonstrates that quite effectively on the concert stage. The musical orientation of Markus Zahnhausen could, in certain respects, be classified as postminimalism which is of course influenced - quite individually - by the personality of the composer. This finds clear expression in the works of the past years.'
The first Rodion Shchedrin Chamber Music Award was awarded
to the Greek Minas Bourboudakis in 2005, the first Maya Plisetskaya Ballet
Prize in spring 2006 to Peter Breuer, the ballet director of the Salzburg
Landestheater, for his 'Carmen' choreography.
The internationally renowned composer Rodion Shchedrin and his wife Maya
Plisetskaya, the former prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Theatre for many
years, set up their Foundation in order to 'support, on an international
level, talented young artists, interpreters, composers, dancers and authors
in the fields of ballet dance and music'.
Rodion Shchedrin, who was born in Moscow in 1932 and is now alternately living in his home town, in Lithuania and in Munich, is one of the most important Russian composers in succession to Dmitri Shostakovich. His wife Maya Plisetskaya is one of the most important ballet dancers of the 20th century who received many prizes.
Press contact: PR Ute Armanski, phone: 089 4480238,
e-mail: info@pr-armanski.de
Contact: Referat für Presse und Öffentlichkeit
der Musikhochschule München, Dorothee Göbel, phone: 089 28927-440,
fax: 089 28927-449, e-mail: dorothee.goebel@musikhochschule-muenchen.de
Biography of Markus Zahnhausen
Markus
Zahnhausen, born in Saarbrücken in 1965, is one of the best-known
European recorder virtuosos and composers for this instrument today. He
received his musical training at the Richard Strauss Conservatoire in
Munich. In addition, he studied Slavonic studies and musicology at the
universities of Trier and Munich. He was a guest lecturer at numerous
European music academies, such as the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in
Odense/Denmark, the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen, the Birmingham
Conservatoire, and many more. As a music journalist, he has worked for
the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and regularly for the Bavarian Radio
as well as for specialist journals at home and abroad. His work as a performer
of early and contemporary recorder music has led him throughout Europe
- for many concerts, CD recordings, and radio and television broadcasts,
including the Moscow Autumn Festival, the St Petersburg Spring Festival,
the London Exhibition of Early Music, and performances in Tatarstan and
the Urals. His musical œuvre includes both orchestral, choral and
chamber music and, above all, compositions for the recorder. Markus Zahnhausen
is editor of the Modern Recorder Library Series of the Moeseler publishing
house in Wolfenbuettel and has inspired many new works for the recorder
from renowned composers such as Rodion Shchedrin, Harald Genzmer, Guenter
Kochan, Hans Stadlmair, and Ruth Zechlin. Since October 2002 Markus Zahnhausen
has taught the recorder at the Munich Academy for Music and Theatre. For
his compositional œuvre, he was awarded the Bavarian State Prize
'Villa Concordia'. In March 2003 the world première of Zahnhausen's
String Quartet No. 1 'Stilleben' performed by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Quartet
was a huge success. In December 2003 Zahnhausen made his American debut
with concerts and master classes as a guest lecturer at the Wichita State
University. In 2005 he won a scholarship for a residency at the Millay
Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz/New York. In 2006 he was awarded the
Music Scholarship of the City of Munich.
Evening PROGRAMME
(subject to changes)
Rodion Shchedrin (*1932) Piano Sonata No. 2
Markus Zahnhausen (*1965) HORNS OF ELFLAND
Fragments in Memory of Benjamin Britten for tenor recorder solo (1999)
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) PRELUDE AND FUGUE for piano from Op. 87
(1950/51)
Rodion Shchedrin (*1932) PRELUDE AND FUGUE for piano (1964/70)
Markus Zahnhausen (*1965) BYLINA for chamber ensemble (2006)
Performers:
Ensemble Zeitsprung, Director: Markus Elsner (www.markuselsner.com)
Markus Bartholomé (recorder)
Prof. Dr. Siegfried Mauser (piano)
Elena Nesterenko (piano)
Award ceremony and concert on 16.11.06, 7:30pm at the:
Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Großer Konzertsaal, Arcisstraße
12,
80333 München, www.musikhochschule-muenchen.de.
Admission to the concert is free!