Over 400 entries from 40 countries were sieved down to five finalists for Sunday's Gala Concert in Cowdray Hall.
Performed by musicians from the BBC SSO, their compositions were judged by Julian Anderson.
His piece, Eden, succeeded in transforming the orchestra into a magnificent chiming carillon of sound when it opened the second half of the BBC SSO’s concert, conducted by Ilan Volkov, in Aberdeen’s Music Hall on Friday to launch a weekend of events surrounding the fourth biannual Music Prize – a collaborative enterprise between Aberdeen University and the BBC SSO, and supported by Sound, the north-east of Scotland’s contemporary music festival. This opening concert included a fervent Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan And Isolde, La Mort de Cléopâtre by Berlioz (with stunning Rumanian mezzo Ruxandra Donose) then an incomparable Sibelius Second Symphony.
On Saturday, in King’s College Chapel, a Composer Portrait presented three works by Anderson for solo viola and solo piano, followed by a mind-blowing piece, The Bearded Lady, played with excoriating brilliance by clarinettist Joanna Nicholson and pianist Simon Smith.
At the Sunday gala, four of the five finalists had written for string quartet plus trumpet. Representing Israel, Dr Shai Cohen’s Circles Of Time – a trumpet concerto in miniature, was played standing up by Mark O’Keefe. Christophe Looten from France offered Quintet, in which a reedy muted trumpet was closely integrated into the ensemble. Japan’s Azusa Yomogida’s Autana III had atmospheric impact, while Zvonimir Nagy from Croatia (and now the US) offered a delicate piece in which the trumpet just coloured the quartet.
Marc Garcia Vitoria from Spain had composed for string trio, only employing radically advanced string colouring techniques, and it was he who won the £5000 commission to compose a piece for the BBC SSO to be performed in Aberdeen next year.
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