Beyond Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” and Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 3, how many Pulitzer Prize winners are actually known to the average concertgoer? Sure, the operas of Gian Carlo Menotti and Robert Ward get revived from time to time, and Jennifer Higdon has been exceptionally fortunate for a composer in her prime. But most Pulitzer winners tend to languish in relative obscurity.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” in advance of Friday’s announcement of this year’s winners and nominees, we’ll take another look back on Pulitzer history and sample three honored works.
The very earliest recipient in the music category, in 1943, was William Schuman’s “A Free Song.” Schuman sets a text drawn from Walt Whitman’s “Drum Taps,” verse which grew out of the poet’s Civil War experiences, but also spoke with vigor and optimism to a country once again caught in the throes of conflict. The work was recorded for the first time only in 2011.
Also on the program will be music by William Bolcom. Bolcom, who only just turned 83, is a composer at home in all genres. His cabaret recitals with his wife, Joan Morris, have always been great favorites; his rag, “Graceful Ghost,” receives heavy air time around Halloween; and his magnum opus, “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” is a kaleidoscopic, two-and-a-half-hour journey enlivened by bluegrass, country, soul, folk, vaudeville, rock, reggae, and classical influences. We’ll hear selections from Bolcom’s “12 New Etudes for Piano,” the Pulitzer-winner from 1988, performed by the unflappable Marc-André Hamelin.
Finally, we’ll turn to Caroline Shaw and her extraordinary “Partita for 8 Voices,” which was awarded the Pulitzer in 2013. Shaw, the youngest recipient of the prize for music, was only 30 years-old at the time and a doctoral candidate at Princeton University. Her “Partita” navigates a dizzying array of genres and techniques. The piece will be presented in a flabbergastingly virtuosic performance by the a cappella ensemble Roomful of Teeth, of which Shaw is a founding member.
I hope you’ll join me for an hour of prized Pulitzer music. That’s “Further Pulitzer Surprises,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
PHOTO: Caroline Shaw (front left) with Roomful of Teeth
