Andras Schiff
(c) Nadia F Romanini
This morning the Japan Art Association has announced the recipients of the 2025 Praemium Imperiale Awards. In the music category, the winner is the 71-year-old Hungarian-born British pianist Andras Schiff.
Each Laureate receives an honorarium of 15 million Yen (c. €87,000). The awards are given by the Japan Art Association under the honorary patronage of His Imperial Highness Prince Hitachi, young brother to the Emperor Emeritus of Japan.
Schiff has received numerous awards and honours. He continues to travel widely to perform, although there are countries which he chooses not to visit because of their politics.
Schiff is a visiting professor of piano at the Barenboim–Said Akademie in Berlin and the first artist-in-residence of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 1999, he formed an occasional chamber orchestra, which he named the Cappella Andrea Barca, with the name coming from an Italian translation of his last name (Barca and Schiff both mean « boat », Barca in Italian and Schiff in German).
Schiff is married to the violinist Yūko Shiokawa. The couple have residences in London; Florence, Italy, Kamakura, Japan, and Basel, Switzerland.
Schiff has made public statements about politics. He has also become an outspoken critic of the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán, whom he has publicly accused of racism, anti-Semitism, and neo-fascism, stating in January 2012 that he would never again set foot in his native country.
In 2000, he commented on the rise of the far-right in Austria. He subsequently gave up his Austrian citizenship and took British citizenship in 2001.
n 2025, Schiff announced that he would cancel all upcoming appearances in the United States due to President Donald Trump’s « unbelievable bullying » of other nations and leaders, especially President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine. He elaborated that Trump’s immigration policies “ring a bell – it rings a terrible bell. My family, my Jewish family, was deported – some to Auschwitz, and some to other concentration camps.”
