Belmont Prize 2004
for Contemporary Music

Statement from the Board of Trustees

Her playing, especially of the music of our time, is impressive for the courage of her driving emotionality and the deep earnestness of her musical delivery. She masters every technical challenge with bravura, striking a perfect balance between reason and feeling.

“Even though our Foundation expressly promotes contemporary music, we agree with Paul Valéry that ‘an exclusive pleasure in novelty implies a decline in critical intelligence.’ Walter Levin, with professional aplomb,  enlarges on this bon mot by demanding that “one must play new music in order to do justice to the old.”
Gabriele Forberg-Schneider

“The way that she instilled subliminal emotion into the iridescent skeins of Pierre Boulez’s Anthèmes and, in contrast, sprinkled licorice overtones on Richard Strauss’s early Violin Sonata without sullying its refulgent romantic melodies with mawkishness conjured up the aerial zephyrs of an Italian summer evening. Markus Fein has compared the personality of this extraordinary violinist with Schoenberg’s dictum: ‘Art doesn’t come from skill, but from compulsion.’”
Die Welt, 10 August 2004
 
Own Projects / 2008
www.carolinwidmann.com