Tomorrow afternoon, the Pulitzer Prize committee will announce this year’s winners and nominees. In anticipation, tonight on “The Lost Chord,” we look back on the history of the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Really, other than Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” and Ives’ Symphony No. 3, how often do you get to hear this stuff? Okay, the operas of Menotti and Robert Ward get revived from time to time, and Jennifer Higdon has been very fortunate for a composer in her prime. Yet most of the Pulitzer winners remain elusive.
We’ll have a chance to sample three of them, as part of our annual “Pulitzer Surprises” show – including the very first, William Schuman’s “A Free Song” (1943), recorded for the first time only in 2011, and the most recent, Caroline Shaw’s “Partita for 8 Voices” (2013).
Shaw – at 30, the youngest recipient in the history of the category – is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. Her work for string quartet, “Ritornello 2.sq.2.j,” will be performed by the JACK Quartet in Princeton this Tuesday.
The “Partita” is certainly the highlight of tonight’s program, with a dizzying array of genres and techniques ably navigated by the a cappella ensemble, Roomful of Teeth.
Also on the program will be a sampling of William Bolcom’s “12 New Etudes for Piano,” the Pulitzer-winner from 1988.
You can hear it tonight at 10:00 ET, with a repeat Thursday night at 11, or catch it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.
