Wiedenhofer Receives the Fanny Mendelssohn Composition Prize

Munich-based composer Johannes Wiedenhofer has been awarded the Fanny Mendelssohn Composition Prize, which comes with a prize of 10,000 euros. The award was presented on Friday evening at the Cage-Haus Halberstadt during the KlangART Vision Festival for contemporary music in Saxony-Anhalt. A chamber music piece by Wiedenhofer, composed specifically for this occasion, had its world premiere at the concert.

The evening was part of the supporting program for the Klangwechsel performance of the organ piece “ORGAN2/ASLSP” by American composer John Cage (1912–1992). The abbreviation ASLSP stands for “as slow as possible” and thus also serves as a performance instruction. As the slowest work in music history, it has been running for 25 years and is therefore still quite early in its performance. This is because the total performance duration is supposed to be 639 years. Now, one note has been added.

Wiedenhofer prevailed among 25 applicants

The Fanny Mendelssohn Prize has been awarded annually since 2024 by the “KlangART” in collaboration with the Fanny Mendelssohn Förderpreis (Hamburg) and the Moses Mendelssohn Academy in Halberstadt. It is intended for composers under the age of 35 who reside in Europe. Wiedenhofer emerged victorious from among 25 applicants.

Wiedenhofer, born in 2005, was already composing at the age of nine, the festival announced. He was a student of Minas Borboudakis and is currently studying music theory at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich as well as composition at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Last year, he was accepted into the scholarship program of the German National Academic Foundation.

Award Honors Sister of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn (1805–1847) was a German Romantic composer. The sister of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy also made a name for herself as a pianist and conductor and was married to the painter Wilhelm Hensel.