Rebecca Saunders : Berlin composer receives Ernst von Siemens music prize

The "Nobel prize for music" comes to Berlin this year. Here the composer Rebecca Saunders has lived since 1997 in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg. For a life in the service of the music, the 51-year-old British woman has received this year's main prize of the Ernst von Siemens music Foundation, endowed with EUR 250 000. Grew up Saunders in London in a household that was filled with over generation boundaries of music. Four pianos surrounded her in her youth, she likes to lay under a Grand piano while her father played.

The physical experience of music, which would later be so important for your own work, found their origins here. Saunders composed as a child a lot, your Instrument is the violin, on which she played Bach until you hit on the music of Wolfgang Rihm. After a concert, she decides to study with him in Karlsruhe: "Rihm's music had for me a deep sensuality and a very complex and fascinating approach to sound colours. Also, the life-affirming power of his music appealed to me immediately. I knew that's Where I should be.“

the very sight of a piano sets a game in motion

With Rihm discovered Saunders, the music of Galina Ustwolskayas, and an uncompromising shade of passion. Add to this a deep veneration for the works of Samuel Beckett, which form the Background for many of the compositions of Saunders. Strong drivers to explore musical worlds. The composer works closely with the performing musicians, the "sheer physicality of their playing is" always an important source of inspiration. Just the sight of a pianist at his piano sets a game in motion: "It is pure theatre. This is beautiful.“

Saunders' space music will take the listener on a journey, as the station's work "Chroma", introduced by the composer for the March music 2011 in the Café Moscow. Over many years, they created instruments out of 22 sound modules, which are distributed in corridors, alcoves, halls, stairs, and Elevator cabins. The can trumpets be a Norwegian folk song, the melancholy runs deep-groove 78 Rpm, old Gramophone, a Duo for a futuristic double-a judge, a swarm of miniature game watches, or a Trio for electric guitar, Cello and clarinet. The listener seeks his own Hörpfad by the carefully timed sound landscape. For Sasha Waltz's choreographic Installation "Insideout" created Saunders the acoustic guise. This cooperation is not for the composer without any Scare, because they had underestimated the noise of the stage space, the audience.

compositions with filigree core

Because so much Saunders powerful accents, the piano lid to fall, and the eternal Yes of Molly Bloom pays homage to your highly successful compositions have a delicate core that encloses the silence delicate. The Board of Trustees of the Ernst von Siemens music Foundation, which is also her teacher Wolfgang Rihm is a member, recognizes a work, "through its productive contradictions, the diversity of color of tonal nuances and a distinctive musical language visible and significant mark in the music history of the present". While the Nobel prize for literature is in a deep crisis, will be awarded his musical counterpart harmoniously and consistently: in 1996, Rebecca Saunders had already won the prize.