Widmann '99 A.D. Wins Music Prize

Violinist Carolin Widmann wins Schneider-Schott Music Prize

Recognised for her commitment to the work of living composers

Violinist Carolin Widmann ’99 A.D. has been named the winner of this year’s Schneider-Schott Music Prize. The €15,000 award will be presented on November 11 in a concert with the State Orchestra of Mainz under the direction of Hermann Bäumer. Founded in 1986 by music publisher Heinz Schneider-Schott, the prize recognizes artists championing the work of living composers.

Widmann was born in 1976 in Munich, and studied in Cologne, at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and at NEC, where she was an Artist Diploma student of Michèle Auclair. She has collaborated with conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Riccardo Chailly and Sir Roger Norrington, and with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich.

The violinist has been a professor at the Felix Mendelssohn University of Music and Theatre in Leipzig since 2006, and has directed the Hitzacker Summer Music Festival since 2009.

This season she will give the world premiere of a new violin concerto written for her by Julian Anderson, commissioned by Seattle Symphony, London Philharmonic and Deutsche Symphonieorchester Berlin.

The Schneider-Schott Music Prize is awarded every two years by an independent jury of experts—currently including composer Wolfgang Rihm and pianist Lars Vogt.

Photo by Marco Borggreve