Composer Peter Lieberson is the 2008 recipient of the University of Louisville’s Grawemeyer Award in music composition.
Lieberson (Photo, right, by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson) won the award for Neruda Songs, a five-song cycle he wrote for his late wife, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died in 2006 after battling breast cancer. The mezzo-soprano premiered the work, based on sonnets by Nobel Prize-winning author Pablo Neruda, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic before she died. She also recorded the songs for Nonesuch Records.
“It is impossible to think of a more suitable candidate,” for the prestigious award, New Yorker Magazine music critic Alex Ross wrote on his blog, The Rest is Noise. “Neruda Songs is music of high craft and deep emotion; it is destined to live a very long time.”
The Courier-Journal of Louisville reported that Lieberson, who is battling lymphoma, hopes to make it to Louisville in 2008 to accept his $200,000 award and gold medal.
Comments