On 20 November, an annual award ceremony to announce the most noteworthy Lithuanian pieces of music from 2017 took place at the Composers’ House in Vilnius.

A total of 64 opuses, all of which premiered in 2017, were submitted for the competition to represent different genres of music. The most remarkable works were selected by a jury which included musicologists Beata Baublinskienė, Linas Paulauskis and Rima Povilionienė; composers Teisutis Makačinas and Mārtiņš Viļums; music performers Robertas Beinaris, Rūta Rikterė, Ingrida Rupaitė and Karolis Variakojis; and a musicologist and conductor Donatas Katkus.

Raminta Šerkšnytė won the category “For a Convincing Bond of Music and Drama” with her opera for children, Penki Merės Stebuklai (Mary’s Five Wonders).

The Concert for the Piano Trio and Symphony Orchestra by Anatolijus Šenderovas was named the winner of the category “For the Vitality of Concert as a Genre”.

Composer Šarūnas Nakas was awarded for his Paveikta Moteris (An Affected Woman) for a Set of Kanklės and Groups of Winds in the category “For Timbral Revelations and Creation of Sound-spaces”. 

The Young Composers Award went to Andrius Arutiunian.

This year’s ceremony included, for the first time ever, a special Award of Honour to show gratitude to Rūta Stanevičiūtė, a musicologist who initiated the premiere performance of Jeronimas Kačinskas’ Trio No. 1 for a System of Quarter-tones composed back in 1933.
 
In addition to that, the jury selected fifteen works for an online vote, at www.lks.lt/metukuriniai, in which Šarūnas Nakas was the named the winner with 2798 votes.

This year’s awards were funded by LATGA, the national collective copyright management association, and the Lithuanian Council for Culture.