The photo is a spoiler, but without it most music lovers, myself included, would be hard put to identify Arvo Pärt as the most performed contemporary classical composer. He is the reclusive, mystical-spiritual-brooding Estonian composer, who until recently was the somewhat-guilty pleasure of a rather limited number of listeners.
But now Pärt, 78, is really rocking. He just won one of the world's richest musical prizes — Japan Art Association's 2014 Praemium Imperiale Award, worth 15 million yen ($149,000) — and has been established, repeatedly, as the most frequently performed contemporary classical composer in the world.
Several sources, including Wiki Bachtrack, report Pärt as No. 1 for the third consecutive year. Statistics leave you cold? Sample Silencio and Symphony No. 4 (Los Angeles)
Incidentally — and surprisingly — statistics showed San Francisco Symphony as the "busiest orchestra in the world," followed by New York, Chicago, the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, Nordwestdeutsch Philharmonie, Philadelphia, Bournemouth, Boston, Philharmonia, and Berlin Philharmonic in 10th place.
Bad news on the gender-equality front:
Female conductors were a rarity last year [2012], and just one of our 100 busiest conductors was a woman. Unsurprisingly, this was Marin Alsop, who was number 70. She would have ranked significantly higher if we’d had last season’s events for either Baltimore Symphony (where she’s music director) or the São Paulo State Symphony (where she’s principal conductor).The most concerning sign is the lack of other women up there with her — here’s hoping for change in the year ahead. Even worse, not a single one of our 100 most performed composers of concert works was female — as was also the case last year. Clara Schumann topped this list, at number 182. Of contemporary female composers, Judith Bingham was top at 202, followed by Unsuk Chin and Kaija Saariaho.