Brett Dean wins 2009 Grawemeyer Award

Brett Dean has been awarded the prestigious 2009 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his violin concerto The Lost Art of Letter Writing. Premiered in 2007 by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Frank Peter Zimmermann, conducted by Brett Dean himself, The Lost Art of Letter Writing was commissioned by the Cologne Philharmonie and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. It has also received performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic and Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.

Brett Dean writes of his reaction on winning the award: “The writing of music is a solitary process, and one spends a lot of time immersed in one's own internal sound world. A prize is an acknowledgement that one's work is not only being heard, but appreciated in the big, wide world outside of one's own studio. But I can think of no prize which represents a more significant acknowledgement of this kind than the Grawemeyer Award. To read the names of the award's previous winners, and to know that my own work will stand alongside the work of these legendary musicians that I admire so greatly, is a humbling and moving experience.”

Each movement in the half-hour concerto explores a different 19th Century letter, with the violin evoking the mood of each letter as it plays the alternate roles of writer and recipient. Authors of the letters include composers Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf, artist Vincent Van Gogh and Australian outlaw Ned Kelly.

One of today's most exciting and talented living composers, Brett Dean has recently been commissioned by some of the world's major orchestras and festivals including the Lucerne Festival, BBC Proms, Berlin Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestra and Sydney Symphony. Future plans include his first opera Bliss (libretto by Amanda Holden after Peter Carey's novel) to be premiered in 2010 by Opera Australia. Dean began composing in the 1980's while a member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and now lives in his native Australia, enjoying an international career as composer, violist and conductor. He performs widely as soloist in his Viola Concerto which was recently released on BIS to great critical acclaim, the Guardian writing "the two works included here that feature his playing show him to be a formidable and musical player as well as an impressive composer" (August 2008).

The Grawemeyer Award is the world’s most prestigious composition prize, worth $200,000 and described by the New York Times as 'the Nobel Prize for Classical Music‘. Established in 1984, previous winners have included Witold Lutoslawski, György Ligeti, Harrison Birtwistle, John Adams, Unsuk Chin and György Kurtág. The Grawemeyer Foundation makes five awards each year, for music composition, education, ideas improving world order, religion and psychology. The selection process includes a jury of professionals from each discipline and a knowledgeable lay panel. The late Charles Grawemeyer was an industrialist, entrepreneur and University of Louisville graduate who had a lifelong passion for music, education and religious studies.

For further information about the Grawemeyer Awards, click here to visit their website.

The music of Brett Dean is published by Boosey & Hawkes (click here for further information).

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