Pierre-Laurent Aimard Awarded 2017 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize
Pierre-Laurent Aimard – the Grammy Award-winning French pianist hailed as “a brilliant musician and an extraordinary visionary” (Wall Street Journal) – has been awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for 2017. Given in recognition of a life devoted to the service of music, the award is endowed with 250,000 euros. The prize ceremony will take place on June 2, 2017 at the Prinzregententheater in Munich, and this year the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will award a total of 3.5 million euros in prizes and grants.
Named principal pianist of the then newly-founded Ensemble intercontemporain when he was just 19, Aimard went on to develop a close personal relationship with Pierre Boulez, the founder of that ensemble, and with many more of the 20th century’s greatest composers. These included Olivier Messiaen, whose wife Yvonne Loriod was one of Aimard’s teachers; Karlheinz Stockhausen; György Kurtág; and György Ligeti – all of whom were also winners of the Siemens Music Prize. In Aimard, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation honors a pianist of light and color who brings clarity and life to everything he plays. His unusual path from the music of the present to that of the past, his boundless joy of discovery, and the meticulousness with which he devotes himself to composers ranging from Bach to George Benjamin make him one of the exceptional musicians of our time.
The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize will be awarded to Aimard on June 2, 2017 during a musical ceremony at the Prinzregententheater in Munich. Michael Krüger, President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, will present this illustrious accolade. In addition, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will award Composers’ Prizes to three promising young composers who will be named in late February. Alongside solo pieces performed by Aimard, the Munich Chamber Orchestra will play works by the Composers’ Prize winners.
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© 21C Media Group, January 2017
