PRESS KIT ERNST VON SIEMENS MUSIC PRIZE 2017 CONTENT PRESS RELEASES Press release May 2017 Press release February 2017 Press release January 2017 ERNST VON SIEMENS MUSIC PRIZE 2017 Program PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD Essay by Ulrich Mosch In conversation with Pierre-Laurent Aimard Pierre-Laurent Aimard on his choice of works Biography Recordings COMPOSERS’ PRIZES 2017 Michael Pelzel Simon Steen-Andersen Lisa Streich PHOTO OVERVIEW BOARD OF SUPERVISORS AND BOARD OF TRUSTEES ARCHIVE PRESS RELEASES Press Release May 2017 Award Ceremony: Pierre-Laurent Aimard receives the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize Composers’ Prizes to Lisa Streich, Michael Pelzel and Simon Steen-Andersen For the first time, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation provides a total of €3.5 Million The international Ernst von Siemens Music Prize will be awarded to the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard on the 2nd June by Michael Krüger, Chairman of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation’s Board of Supervisors. The prize – which is endowed with €250,000 – will be awarded as part of a ceremonial concert in Munich’s Prinzregententheater, to be streamed live on the internet. Award Ceremony at 8pm on 2nd June 2017, in the Prinzregententheater, Munich The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize will be awarded to Pierre-Laurent Aimard during a ceremonial concert on Friday 2nd June 2017 in Munich’s Prinzregententheater, to be presented by Michael Krüger, President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. The laudation speech will be given by the British composer and conductor George Benjamin – a lifelong friend of Aimard’s – whose work Shadowlines will be played by the award winner during the following recital. In addition, Passio sine nomine by György Kurtág, two of György Ligeti’s Études – Entrelacs and Der Zauberlehrling –, Passacaglia canonica from Miniature Estrose by Marco Stroppa, Elliott Carter’s Caténaires as well as the piano duet Frames by Vassos Nicolaou – to be played by Aimard together with his wife, Tamara Stefanovich – will be performed. These pieces reflect the diversity of friends and colleagues Aimard has worked with during his career. Commenting on his choice of works, Aimard said, ‘My programme consists of works by composers I have worked with and with whom I have a special relationship. Each of these pieces is dedicated to me. And I premiered them, so they were especially important for me concerning my musical development. Taken together, they portray what is essential to me as performer and interpreter.’ The recipients of the Composers’ Prizes Michael Pelzel, Simon Steen-Andersen and Lisa Streich will be introduced through short films by Johannes List, which will also be available on the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation’s website from the evening prior to the ceremony. The Münchner Kammerorchester (MKO) will play an excerpt from pieces by Lisa Streich and Michael Pelzel under the direction of Jonathan Stockhammer. AUGENLIDER (Eyelids) by Lisa Streich, a piece for prepared guitar and orchestra, will feature the young British guitarist Laura Snowden. The CLEX, an electronically extended contrabass-clarinet played by the soloist Ernesto Molinari, will make an appearance as part of Michael Pelzel’s concerto Gravity’s Rainbow. Likewise, Run Time Error – a joystick-controlled video-performance – will give insight into the work of Simon Steen- Andersen. Cooperation between the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and the Bavarian Broadcaster BR will once again enable the live transmission of the ceremony online at www.evs-musikstiftung.ch and www.br- klassik.de. Over €3 Million for Contemporary Music Projects Worldwide For the first time, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation provides a total of €3.5 million in the form of awards and grants. Of this, €3 million has gone to support 130 projects worldwide – from Rio de Janeiro to Rome, from Iceland to Israel, from Shiraz to Schwetzingen. The EvS Music Foundation provides assistance to the Brazilian-European project Re-inventing Smetak in Rio de Janeiro and São Paolo, the premiere of a contemporary poly-choral work in Rome, the Tzlil Meudcan (‘Updated Tone’) festival in Tel Aviv and the Shiraz Festival for Contemporary Music organised by the Association of Iranian Contemporary Music Composers. Once again, the majority of financial support has been used for the commission of new works of music, with grants likewise available for festivals, concerts, educational institutes, symposiums, publications as well as mediation projects. The recipient of the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize receives €250,000, while the winners of the Composers’ Prizes receive €35,000 each as well as the production of a CD. For interview questions and/or visual-media, please contact: Imke List and Dr. Tanja Pröbstl | +49 (0)89 636 32907 | [email protected] Current visual-media of the award ceremony can be downloaded after the event from the Press area of our homepage at www.evs-musikstiftung.ch/en/press.html Press Release February 2017 Composers’ Prizes of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation for Michael Pelzel, Simon Steen-Andersen and Lisa Streich | Contemporary music projects supported with more than 3 million euros In 2017, the three Composers’ Prizes of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation go to the Swedish composer Lisa Streich, the Danish composer Simon Steen-Andersen and the Swiss composer Michael Pelzel. Each of these awards for promising young composers is endowed with 35,000 euros. In addition, the young artists will receive portrait CDs. In 2017, for the first time, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will award over 3.5 million euros in prize money and grants. The largest share – more than 3 million euros – will go towards supporting contemporary music projects worldwide. The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, which is being awarded to the French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard this year, is endowed with 250,000 euros. 3 million euros for contemporary music projects worldwide For the first time, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will award 3.5 million euros in prize money and grants. Thereof 3 million euros will go towards supporting 130 projects worldwide – from Buenos Aires to Budapest, from Iceland to Israel. For example, the EvS Music foundation is supporting the Latin American premiere of Georg Friedrich Haas’s In Vain at the famous Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Cycle Music and Arts Festival in Island, the Tzlil Meudcan (‘updated sound’ in Hebrew) in Tel Aviv, or a music theatre workshop for young composers held by the Peter Eötvös Foundation in Budapest. The largest part of the funds will finance and support commissions for new works by such composers as Rebecca Saunders, Adriana Hölszky, Iris ter Schiphorst, Salvatore Sciarrino and Aribert Reimann. The repertoire for unusual instrumentations will also be expanded with commissions, for example for electric guitar quartet by Alexander Schubert, Joanna Bailie und Christopher Trapani. The Irish composer Ann Cleare will be writing a piece for voices and trombone, commissioned by the Ekmeles Ensemble from New York. Ensemble intercomporain, whose long- standing solo pianist was none other than this year’s EvS Music Prize winner Pierre-Laurent Aimard, will commission seven composers – from Mark Andre to Marko Nikodijevic – to write pieces relating to the seven days of the creation. The EvS Music Foundation supports both festivals with long traditions, such as the Donaueschingen Festival, and smaller festivals like Gezeitenkonzerte (Tidal Concerts) 2017 in East Frisia with a composer portrait of Jan Müller-Wieland or Music Books II, which will be bringing the music of Salvatore Sciarrino to Ireland’s County Louth this year. Furthermore, the support of the EvS Music Foundation will enable such concerts as ‘Dialogues with Latin America’ by the Mexican Trio Moralia, featuring numerous world and Mexican premieres, projects for children and young people like the BigBang festival in Hamburg, conferences such as the Darmstadt Spring Conference held by the Institute for New Music and Music Education, as well as publications like the new, practically-oriented critical edition of Arthur Honegger’s Le Roi David, to name only a small selection. The next application deadline for project grants is 1 March 2017. Detailed information on all project grants and how to apply for them can be found on our homepage: www.evs-musikstiftung.ch Composers’ Prizes for Michael Pelzel, Simon Steen-Andersen and Lisa Streich As a Swiss foundation, we are happy to announce that in 2017, there will once again be a composer from Switzerland among the Composers’ Prize winners. Michael Pelzel was born in Rapperswil in 1978. He studied organ and composition in Lucerne, Basel, Stuttgart, Berlin and Karlsruhe. His composition teachers were Dieter Ammann, Detlev Müller-Siemens, Georg-Friedrich Haas, Hanspeter Kyburz and Wolfgang Rihm. Among other awards, he won the 2005 musica viva Composition Prize of Bavarian Radio in Munich, the 2011 Busoni Composition Prize and the 2016 Composition Prize of the State Capital Stuttgart. Michael Pelzel works as a freelance composer and organist, and is also the organist for the reform church in Stäfa, on Lake Zurich. Michael Pelzel’s music exerts a powerful pull, drawing in the listener. As in Yves Klein’s famous monochrome blue, differentiation and homogeneity are interwoven in fascinating ways: he allows his ensembles to transcend their components and create an amalgamated overall sound while still retaining a depth of focus full of rich details. He also refines his sensitivity to sounds and rhythms by engaging with extra-European music: he recently travelled to southern India to devote himself to the clay pot drum ghatam and Carnatic music, with its highly unusual rhythmic concepts. He also gained decisive artistic impulses form a three- month residency in South Africa. In awarding a prize to Simon Steen-Andersen, we acknowledge the work of a composer whose music is very closely tied to the possibility of multimedia technology, yet does not lose itself therein or succumb to trends.