TURKISH COMPOSER EGE GÜR WINS EUROPEAN COMPOSITION PRIZE 2024. THE PUCCINI "PROBLEM", BY ALEXANDRA WILSON, NOW IN SPANISH, ACANTILADO

 Gür's winning work, "the image of that which is invisible," is dedicated to victims of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria

26-year-old Turkish composer Ege Gür has been named the winner of the European Composition Prize for 2024. His winning work, the image of that which is invisible, is dedicated to the victims of earthquakes in Turkey and Syria in 2023.

Awarded through Young Euro Classic, the prize carries a value of €5,000 and was presented by Sarah Wedl-Wilson, Berlin's Secretary of State for Culture. The work was performed by the National Youth Philharmonic of Turkey in the Konzerthaus Berlin on August 10, 2024.

Born in Istanbul in 1998, Gür initially studied the double bass at the Ankara Academy of Fine Arts. He is presently studying for a master's degree at the Ankara State Conservatory.

"The work stood out from the crowd because it was convincing on several levels: not only is it a work that can produce wonderful, new, and experimental sounds with its playing techniques and orchestration, it can also touch the listener on a content-related and dramatic level and stimulate thought and feeling," said jury chair Nik Bohnenberger.

"On a technical level, the decision to use melodic elements only in the piccolo and double basses as maximum opposite pairs, while the middle sound of the strings and woodwinds was filled with cloudy clusters, is particularly praiseworthy."

"This gave the piece a Janus-faced quality that was only reinforced by a very subtle use of noisy elements in the percussion and harp. From a dramatic point of view, it was a trick to give the clusters, which were initially just filling, an increasingly important role towards the end, as the subcutaneous came to the surface!"

"The emptiness created by the absolute, the unspoken, the invisible, this lack of expression has led to irreversible mistakes in capable hands," Gür said of the work. "The irreversible mistakes made by these capable hands have produced such results that the price had to be paid with hundreds of thousands of human lives."

https://theviolinchannel.com/turkish-composer-ege-gur-wins-european-composition-prize-for-2024/

AND A BOOK:

The Puccini "Problem": Opera, Nationalism, and Modernity (Cambridge Studies in Opera),  marzo 2009

Edición en Inglés  de Alexandra Wilson (Autor)

5,0 5,0 de 5 estrellas   

---

A detailed investigation of the reception and cultural contexts of Puccini's music, this book offers a fresh view of this historically important but frequently overlooked composer. 

Wilson's study explores the ways in which Puccini's music and persona were held up as both the antidote to and the embodiment of the decadence widely felt to be afflicting late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italy, a nation which although politically unified remained culturally divided. 

The book focuses upon two central, related questions that were debated throughout Puccini's career: his status as a national or international composer, and his status as a traditionalist or modernist. 

In addition, Wilson examines how Puccini's operas became caught up in a wide range of extra-musical controversies concerning such issues as gender and class. 

This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of both the history of opera and of the wider artistic and intellectual life of turn-of-the-century Italy.