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The 2026 International Heinrich Schütz Prize has been awarded to German musicologist Christina Siegfried, who directed the Heinrich Schütz Musikfest from 2009 to 2025. The festival and its partners are thus honouring a figure who, over more than fifteen years, played a major role in turning this celebration of the composer into a festival renowned far beyond Central Germany, bringing together concerts, readings, encounters and research centred on Schütz and his time.
A high point of her tenure was Schütz 2022 – ‘weil ich lebe’, organised to mark the 350th anniversary of the composer’s death, with 199 events presented directly by the project, some 400 associated events worldwide and more than 25,000 visitors over thirteen months. Before her long tenure at the festival, she had notably served as chief dramaturge of the Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci from 1991 to 2007.
Established in 2018, the Heinrich Schütz Prize honours artists, researchers and institutions with an outstanding commitment to the performance, promotion and preservation of Schütz’s work and the music of his time. Previous recipients include Hans-Christoph Rademann, Sir Roger Norrington, Françoise Lasserre, Silke Leopold, Musica Fiata and La Capella Ducale.
The 2026 Heinrich Schütz Musikfest will take place from 2 to 11 October in Dresden, Gera, Bad Köstritz, Weißenfels and Zeitz. Christina Siegfried will receive the Prize medal on 7 October at 7 pm at Dresden’s Annenkirche. Viol player Hille Perl will deliver the laudatory address, followed by a performance of Geistliche Chormusik by the Dresdner Kammerchor under Hans-Christoph Rademann, the Prize’s first recipient in 2018.
Official website: https://www.schuetz-musikfest.de/
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