Cremona Musica Awards
Established by CremonaFiere since 2014
What is it?
The Cremona Musica Awards are assigned during the annual Cremona Musica Exhibitions and Festival to personalities and institutions in the music world who have achieved excellence in their field. The awards are presented during the fair by the President of CremonaFiere.
Each year Cremona Musica’s management and scientific committee select the international music stars who have contributed most to spreading great music and the values that have always been linked to musical tradition.
The awards are divided into categories, and cover composition, performance, the projects, the communication and, as of 2018, the guitar making.
The connection with the city of Cremona (a symbol of Italian musical excellence in the world), the context of Cremona Musica (the world’s leading fair of high craftsmanship musical instruments) and the prestige of the awardees, have made the Cremona Musica Awards stand out as one of the most coveted awards in the industry from the very beginning.
Indeed, over the years a number of legendary personalities from the music world have come to Cremona Musica to receive this award, including Alfred Brendel, Shlomo Mintz, Michael Nyman, Krzysztof Penderecki and many others.
The award ceremonies of the 2024 edition
In this edition, they will receive the prestigious award: Paolo Fazioli, was awarded the prize “A Life for the Piano,” while Giorgio Battistelli, won that for Composition. In the Communication category, Giuseppe Tornatore‘s docufilm “Ennio,” dedicated to the figure of the beloved Maestro Morricone, wins, while the laurel for best project goes to theStauffer Academy.
The awards for the Wind Performance category, awarded to Irish virtuoso Sir James Galway, and the award for the Bellows Instruments category, which goes to Riccardo Tesi from Pistoia, an internationally renowned organist , complete the panorama.
The award for the Piano Performance category will be presented to a special guest, the great Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin.
A particularly exciting special Award should be highlighted: it is the one awarded to “Parole liberate,” a project in which texts written by prisoners have become songs thanks to the contribution of Italian and foreign artists. The award will be presented to Paolo Bedini, owner of the record company Baracca & Burattini.
Cremona Musica Awards with M'horò sculptures from the "Fantastic Symphony"
The “Cremona Musica Awards” will be this year’s works by artist M’horò, made in partnership with Lusardi Restauri, M’horò Official Archives, Minotauro Fine Art Gallery, Academ Editore. These are aluminum and copper instruments, beautifully carved and shaped like fine, very light chiselwork. Sculptures that are like an oration of harmony. A solicitation to contemplation. A lesson in evocation and enchantment, where sculptural genius is associated with the formal elegance of musical instruments.
Specialized critics, galleries, institutions and the market, have long reserved great attention for this singular sculptor, with a strong ecological dimension, who realizes his works only and exclusively as “raw” sculpture, operated and generated with only the strength of his hands and simple mechanical tools: a feature of all evidence, this, in the framework of the recovery and redemption of industrial waste from its inevitable oxidation, decomposition, mummification, to make it miraculously lymphatic and vital, as in an epiphany that resuscitates it and gives it back to new life.
2023
“Performing” category: Steven Isserlis
“Communication” category: Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger
“Project” category: Recycled Orchestra of Cateura.
“A Life for the Piano” Special Award: Angelo Fabbrini
“Accordion Construction” category: Paolo Soprani
“Guitar Lutherie” category: Amalia Ramirez
2022
“Performance” category
string instruments: Christophe Coin
“Wind Performance” category:
David Kraukauer
“Guitar Lutherie” category:
John Monteleone
“Communication” category:
Chopin Competition
“Composition” category:
Valentin Silvestov
“Project” category:
Martin Engstroem
2021
“Performance” category
string instruments: Roby Lakatos
“Jazz performance” category: Enrico Pieranunzi
“Communication” category:
María Susana Azzi
“Composition” category:
Richard Danielpour
“Project” category:
Luciano Del Rio
2019
“Performance” category
string instruments: Salvatore Accardo
“Communication” category: Ezio Bosso
“Performance” category
guitar: Paco Peña
“Performance” category
wind instruments: Richard Stoltzman
“Project” category:
Violins for Hope – Amnon Weinstein
2018
“Performance” category
string instruments: Maxim Vengerov
“Performance” category
conducting: Valery Gergiev
“Covering composition” category: Giya Kancheli
“Communication” category:
Alessandro Baricco
“Project” category:
KuhmoChamber Music Festival
“Guitar Lutherie” category:
Hermann Hauser III
2017
“Performing” category: Ivry Gitlis
“Covering composition” category: Giovanni Sollima
“Communication” category: Stuart Isacoff
“Project” category: Santa Cecilia National Academy
2016
“Performing” category: Shlomo Mintz
“Communication” category: Bruno Monsaingeon
2015
“Covering composition” category: Krzysztof Penderecki
“Communication” category: Corinna da Fonseca – Wolheim
“Project” category: Elio delle Storie Tese
2014
“Performing” category: Alfred Brendel
“Covering composition” category: Michael Nyman
“Communication” category: Norman Lebrecht
“Project” category: FuturOrchestra