“For the music, for the people, for the planet”: The US master cellist Yo-Yo Ma accepted the Birgit Nilsson Prize, which is endowed with one million US dollars (1.03 million euros), at the Stockholm Concert Hall on Tuesday evening – and announced that the prize money would be used for projects related to the preservation of nature and international understanding. The 67-year-old musician was awarded the highest prize in the world of classical music by King Carl XVI of Sweden. presented to Gustaf.
Yo-Yo Ma is the first instrumentalist to receive the Nilsson Prize, explicitly for the social commitment that he always combines with his artistic work. “How can I help?” That was the question he internalized, Ma reported in an interview with journalists before the award ceremony. “I’m a one trick pony, I can only play the cello.” But he always experiences how powerfully music touches people, how much culture can create a space for encounters.
Following the example of the Swedish opera singer Nilsson, it is always important to “dedicate yourself to things with everything you have” and thus to take part in the world. He promises, he emphasized in his words of thanks, that he will continue to devote himself to this goal, and continue to do so happily. With the prize money he starts a project in US national parks that aims to bring together people from science, politics, business and culture as well as from the indigenous population to talk about the sustainable conservation of nature. Mas’ laudator and duo partner, the British pianist Kathryn Stott, emphasized the “insatiable curiosity” that always drove the cellist to new projects – especially in the area of intercultural dialogue.
Yo-Yo Ma, who was only awarded the prestigious Praemium Imperiale art prize last year, has been one of the most famous instrumentalists in the world for decades. Born in Paris in 1955 as the son of Chinese immigrants and celebrated as a child prodigy in the USA from the age of eight, Ma has not only been successful in the classical repertoire since childhood, but has also achieved notoriety with intercultural and pop-cultural crossover projects.
Ma, who lives in Cambridge in the US state of Massachusetts, has received numerous Grammys for his music and was appointed United Nations Messenger of Peace for his commitment. His main focus as a solo cellist is on the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. Since 2018 he has been touring the world with a concert program consisting of all six solo suites in a row.
The Birgit Nilsson Prize is awarded approximately every three years. Nilsson, who died at the end of 2005, personally selected the first prize winner, Placido Domingo, who was honored in 2009. Conductor Riccardo Muti followed in 2011, followed by the Vienna Philharmonic in 2014 and Swedish soprano Nina Stemme in 2018. In 2019, the Birgit Nilsson Foundation was transferred to the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm. Since then, the award has not only been open to singers and institutions, but also to instrumentalists.
(S E R V I C E – https://birgitnilsson.com)