Halle/Berlin, May 19 – The Fanny Mendelssohn Composition Prize 2026 has been awarded to Johannes Wiedenhofer. The 21-year-old Munich composer was selected from 25 applicants, as announced by the Fanny Mendelssohn Support Association on Tuesday. Wiedenhofer will receive prize money of 10,000 Euros and a commission to compose a chamber music piece for flute and bassoon.
Premiere at KlangART Vision Festival
Wiedenhofer’s commissioned work will premiere at the award ceremony on August 7 in Halberstadt, as part of the KlangART Vision Festival. The piece will be performed by this year’s winner of the Fanny Mendelssohn Sponsorship Prize, flutist Fabian Johannes Egger, and bassoonist Cosima Maria Heilmaier.
Jury Praises Wiedenhofer’s “Solitary Soundscapes”
“Wiedenhofer’s solitary soundscapes do not leave the audience at a loss, because they rely on logical, balanced, and subtly interlinked progressions that – conceived dialectically – allow flat and dense, consistent and experimental, contemplative and ecstatic elements to correspond,” explained jury chairman Martin Hoffmeister, editor-in-chief of Leipzig Gewandhaus Radio. He added: “On further levels, they amalgamate suggestive tableaux with distinctive melodic lines, complex rhythms, coloristic variance, and traditional idioms.”
About the Fanny Mendelssohn Support Association
The Fanny Mendelssohn Support Association was founded in 2013 by Heide Schwarzweller from Hamburg to support young artists at the start of a solo career. Since 2014, the association has awarded an annual sponsorship prize. In 2024, a composition prize was added, for which the association cooperates with the KlangART Vision Festival in Saxony-Anhalt.
Source: https://www.musik-heute.de/27742/fanny-mendelssohn-kompositionspreis-an-muenchner/
