The Prize Committee for Arts (Music) has unanimously decided that the Prize for 1995/6 be awarded to:
Zubin Mehta
The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
Tel Aviv, Israel
who is considered one of the world’s foremost conductors of our time. His humanitarian contributions to bring people together through the universal language of music and his constant encouragement of young artists, are unforgettable.
Gyorgy Ligeti
Hochschule fuer Musik
Hamburg, Germany
One of the most outstanding composers of the second half of the 20th century. While based on musical tradition, he has brought new ways, original and innovative, and created models to inspire younger generations of composers.
Maestro Zubin Mehta was born in Bombay, India, in 1936. He received early training in music from his father, Mehli Mehta, first concertmaster and later conductor of the Bombay Symphony. He studied violin and piano from the age of 7, and by the time he was 16 he was conducting concerto accompaniments for his father.
He left Bombay for Vienna to study piano, composition, string bass and conducting at the Academy of Music. He played in various orchestras, graduating in 1957 with diploma in conducting. In the following year Mehta conducted the Musikverein in Vienna and won the first prize of the First International Conductors Competition, in Liverpool, England.
Substituting for Eugene Ormandy, Mehta became the youngest conductor ever to lead the Vienna Philharmonic. He was also the youngest man to conduct the then 25-year old Israel Philharmonic in 1961, which he has been invited to conduct each year since. He later became Music Director of the Israel Philharmonic, and in 1981 this appointment was extended for life.
Many important guest-conducting engagements followed. In 1962, at the age of 26, he was engaged to be Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has been Music Director of the Montreal Symphony, the New York Philharmonic and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. In 1998 he will assume his newly appointed post as General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera.
Zubin Mehta has been awarded many international distinctions, including the 'Order of the Lotus', India´s highest cultural award for outstanding accomplishment in the arts and sciences. Mehta received Honorary Doctorate Degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Maestro Gyorgy Ligeti was born in 1923 in the present-day Tirnaveni, Romania. He studied composition under Sandor Veress and Ferenc Farkas in the Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest. From 1950 to 1956 he lectured there on the theory of music. From 1957 to 1958 he lived in Cologne, working in the electronic music studio of the West-deutscher Rundfunk. In 1959 he settled in Vienna and in the 1960´s he lectured regularly at the Oarmstadt courses and in the Academy of Music in Stockholm. He has directed composition courses in Bilthoven, Essen, Jyvaskyla, Tanglewood, Siena and Aix-en-Provence.
Ligeti lived principally in West Berlin from 1969 to 1973. He spent the year 1972 at the University of Stanford in California, as a composer-in-residence. Since 1973 he has been Professor of Composition at the Hochschule fuer Musik in Hamburg. He has received many artistic awards, among them; the Berliner Kunstpreis, the Beethovenpreis der Stadt Bonn, the Bachpreis der Stadt Hamburg, the Prix Maurice Ravel, Prix Honegger, Prix Prince Pierre de Monaco and Commandeur dans I´Ordre National des Arts and Lettres, France. He is a member of the Academies of Arts of Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, the Swedish Royal Academy of Music and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
His numerous compositions include works for wind quintet, string quartets, capella choirs, electronic music, organ, singers and instrumentalists, cello, harpsichord, string orchestra, concertos for piano, cello, flute, oboe and orchestra, women´s choir and orchestra, pieces for tape, for piano, for violin, the opera 'Le Grand Macabre', and many others.