„In Neuwirth, Schumann meets a kindred spirit nearly 200 years later.“ 

Olga Neuwirth will receive the Robert Schumann Prize for Poetry and Music 2020. The prize of €15,000, donated by the Strecker Foundation, Mainz, is awarded every two years for outstanding work in the field of music, poetry and music education. Previous laureates include Pierre Boulez, Wolfgang Rihm and Jörg Widmann. The award ceremony will take place at the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz on 27 November 2020.

The jury underlines, "with her enormous multi-facted creative output, Neuwirth raises the voice of resistance against the mainstream, quick certainties and facile conventions" and "the composer, resisting all redundancy in her open-minded work, makes the case for a period of 21st-century poetic fulfilment.“

One of Neuwirth’s most recent projects is Keyframes for a Hippogriff - Musical Calligrams, a work for countertenor, children's choir and orchestra co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. The world premiere is scheduled for 12 September 2020 at Musikfest Berlin with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Daniel Harding. Find out more about the work in a recent interview with the composer: Neuwirth on Keyframes for a Hippogriff.