Rachel Podger
(c) Jonas Sacks
British Violinist Rachel Podger (*1968) has been awarded the 2015 Royal Academy of Music Bach Prize. The £10,000 prize is given annually to an individual ‘who has made an outstanding contribution to the performance and/or scholarly study of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach’.
Podger holds the Academy’s Micaela Comberti Chair of Baroque Violin and has performed regularly at the school as part of the RAM/Kohn Foundation’s Bach Cantata series. 2015 is also the tenth anniversary of her Brecon Baroque Festival, which this year centers around JS Bach’s life and work in Leipzig.
Previous winners of the Bach Prize include András Schiff, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Masaaki Suzuki, Murray Perahia and Ton Koopman. Podger is the first woman to receive the honor.
