Often, when personalities in a jury are too diverse, their opinions tend to cancel each other, resulting in a pale consensus, while more controversial , but exciting, works may be ignored.
In order to avoid this inconvenience, Toru Takemitsu's great idea was to have a jury consisting of one person only - naturally changing every year.
But, having , alone, to decide the winners of a competition, among more than 80 big orchestral - often complex - scores is a frightening challenge ! I am very conscious that my judgement has been very subjective , that I probably made mistakes, or missed some very fine - or even genial - score . But the beauty of Takemitsu's scheme is that my colleagues - future jurys of the Prize - will be able to repair my mistakes (while maybe commiting their owns...). So, unknown author(s) of the genial piece(s) I missed, please forgive me and try again !

In general, I found that the average level of the scores submitted was quite high. Most of the scores were very professionally written, and many had at least some interesting approach - of sound, tuning, instrumental combinations, etc...
If some criticism would be made, I could mention , for a number of scores, their unnecessary and inefficient complexity (many were written more as music for soloists specializing in contemporary techniques, than for an orchestra, who has limited time and resources -alas -for rehearsing new pieces) . I also became a little bored by an avalanche of repeated notes - which seems to be a recurrent cliché those days - , and by the accumulation of "extended techniques" - a very trendy manierism, not always justified by any musical necessity. A couple of other little problems : some of the scores were written so small that they were almost unreadable ; others used formats so uselessly largeit was hard to get an overview of the music . And finally, a number of scores did not specify whether they were transposed or written in C... and guessing was not always that easy !

The styles and inspirations were very diverse, making comparisons difficult. Finally, I remembered what the French writer and cineast Jean Cocteau used to say to young artists : "Etonnez-moi !" ("Surprise me !"). So, I tried to put aside my stylistical preferences - though I am sure I did not completely manage to - and to open my ears and my mind to unexpected sounds and concepts. Well , at least, some of the selected pieces do obey my self-prescribed commands.
Some more "objective" criteria were : a coherent organization of pitches ; interesting combinations of sounds - whether obtained by conventional playing or new instrumental techniques ; enough flexibility of the rhythms ; good timing and memorable musical structures.

Finally, I preferred to select 4 pieces only, hoping that this would give each of them more rehearsal time, as all these pieces contain a number of technical challenges for the orchestra, and many fine and carefully notated orchestration details, which will need time to put together.

So, ordered by their call number, we have :

[About the selected pieces]

Aquarius
a piece consisting of a well structured chain of fresh sounding textures, with their interesting transformations and transparent harmonies


...FIGURES AT THE BASE OF A CRUCIFIXION
a somber, expressionist work of strong gestures, dramatic progressions and dark sound mixtures


Infinito nero e lontano la luce
mixes soft and clear harmonies with extended techniques and instrumental virtuosity (I apologize to the pianist of the orchestra !)


Deux Présages
a piece which explores mouvements in space , and also displays a carefully crafted orchestration and a number of colorful gestures


December 2009
Tristan Murail