originally taken by photographer Hans Wild., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Ernst von Siemens Music Prize 1974
Benjamin Britten
From the laudatory speech of Martin Hürlimann:
Britten’s sense of the poetry of words, which he discovered with an alert artistic mind in world literature, from Michelangelo to Hölderlin and Pushkin, and his joy in making music remained two of the main features of his work.
Sophisticated as he is, he is always carried by the fundamental joy of music. Everything seems to come easily to him, but he avoids verbosity. He is aware of the trends of the time, but does not subscribe to any particular theory. Time and again, his agile mind comes up with formulations that are as novel as they are astonishingly simple and convincing.
