Ansgar Beste is honored in Lucerne
In February 2015, Ansgar Beste won the Delz Prize for young composers in Basel. As the Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar proudly announces, his winning piece "In den Steppen von Sápmi" will now be premiered at the Lucerne Festival.
The award-winning work "In den Steppen von Sápmi" for prepared) choir a cappella will be performed for the first time in Lucerne on Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 11 a.m. in the Culture and Congress Center in a concert by the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart under the direction of Marcus Creed.
Born in Malmö in 1981, Ansgar Beste successfully completed his composition studies at the Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar in Michael Obst's class in 2007. At the 6th International Composition Competition of the Christoph Delz Foundation, he won over the jury with an eleven-minute choral piece based on six traditional Sami animal joiks.
The Sámi people live north of the Arctic Circle and have their own traditional songs, known as yoiken. Sápmi is the Sami word for Lapland. Joiken are short melodies that are repeated many times during the performance.
In addition to Obst, Best's composition teachers include Luca Francesconi (Malmö), Adriana Hölszky (Salzburg), Wolfgang Rihm (Karlsruhe), Hanspeter Kyburz (Berlin) and Beat Furrer (Graz).