First woman to receive the Ernst-von-Siemens award in 2019, and subject of a dedicated focus at Lucerne Festival and Musikfest Berlin, Rebecca Saunders has been awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement “for the refined sophistication of her research and her compositional intentions, for the attention she dedicates to the sonic microcosm, for her capacity to create a private listening area within the listener, an intimate inner acoustic space that evolves and amplifies the sonic imaginary. The composer conceives a specific temporality for each work which becomes an investigation into and experimentation with the experience of listening. Her elaboration of the sonic material is profoundly speculative and at the same time powerfully empirical and material, tied to the performance and the playing strategies” (from the motivation for the award).
Rebecca Saunders has explained her research as follows: “Surface, weight and feel are part of the reality of musical performance: the weight of the bow on the string; the differentiation of touch of the finger on the piano key; the expansion of the muscles between the shoulder blades drawing sound out of the accordion; the in-breath preceding the 'heard' tone. Being aware of the grit and noise of an instrument, or a voice, reminds us of the presence of a fallible physical body behind the sound. This physical presence of the musician and his acoustic instrument, and of sound itself, are important sources of inspiration”.
At 12:30 pm, Rebecca Saunders will be in dialogue with Ed Atkins.
