Olga Neuwirth Receives 2022 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize

The Ernst von Siemens Foundation has named Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth as the recipient of the 2022 Ernst von Siemens music prize. The award is valued at €250,000 and will be presented to the composer on June 2 at Munich's Prinzregententheater.

The award has been running since 1972, and is presented by the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts on behalf of the Foundation. Presented to a performer, composer, or musicologist each year, it is the most prominent music award in the German-speaking world, and is sometimes known as "the Nobel Prize of music."

Composer Olga Neuwirth was born in Graz and studied at the Academy of Music in Vienna and at the San Francisco Conservatory. She is one of today's foremost composers and has collaborated with a range of prominent ensembles, such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the English National Opera, and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

Her work often has a strong social conscience and is presented in a variety of genres and mediums, including operas, radio-plays, sound-installations, artworks, photography, and film music.

In late 2021 she was awarded the University of Louisville's Grawemeyer Award for her opera Orlando, which was based on Virginia Woolf's novel of the same name. The protagonist of the satirical book is a gender-bending poet who lives through several centuries, meeting many of the key figures of English literature.

"With Olga Neuwirth, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation honors an artist who breaks new ground with her music, who gives contemporary music a new face, who but also gets involved, takes a stand and isn’t afraid to address grievances," said the Foundation in a statement.