Anne-Sophie Mutter will receive the Baden-Württemberg Cultural Award, which will be presented for the ninth time in 2020, this time in the music category. The jury of five decided unanimously on the recipient of the main prize and the encouragement award, which goes to PODIUM Esslingen. In Anne-Sophie Mutter, the Foundation honours a musician who has “uniquely influenced international concert life during recent decades, like few other instrumental artists,” thus the jury’s reasoning. “The outstanding power and depth of her art of interpretation, her great openness to different musical epochs and genres, her indefatigable activism on behalf of young artists and her remarkable sense of social responsibility make her an exemplary ambassador of her native Baden-Württemberg.”
The main award is endowed with 20,000 Euros. “Anne-Sophie Mutter, the recipient of the main award, is a figurehead for Baden-Württemberg,” declared Christoph Dahl, managing director of the Baden-Württemberg Foundation. “Her activism demonstrates how one’s own career can nurture many other young talents.”
The Encouragement Award of the 2020 Baden-Württemberg Cultural Award goes to PODIUM Esslingen, a platform for classical and contemporary music.
Initiated in 2002, the Foundation for the Baden-Württemberg Cultural Award of the Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken and the Baden-Württemberg Foundation presents the Cultural Award every two years, focusing on a different category each time. The prize is endowed with a total of 25,000 Euros and divided into a main and an encouragement award. It honours outstanding achievements in the fields of visual arts, performing arts, film/new media, literature and music. In both categories, the award requires its recipients to be natives of Baden-Württemberg, to live in Baden-Württemberg, or have an obvious connection with the state of Baden-Württemberg. Further information (in German) is available under www.kulturpreis-bw-de.