The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2014–2015 Elise L. Stoeger Prize has been awarded to Austrian composer Thomas Larcher. The Stoeger Prize, a $25,000 cash award and the largest of its kind, is given every two years in recognition of significant contributions to the field of chamber music composition.

Chamber Music Society Artistic Directors David Finckel and Wu Han commented on the announcement: «We are thrilled to present the 2014–2015 Stoeger Prize to Thomas Larcher. As a composer of great achievement on canvasses both large and small, he merits specific recognition for his work in the highly concentrated art form of chamber music, for which his bountiful sonic imagination is tremendously well suited. We find his music deeply communicative yet uncompromising, essential qualities for the ongoing vitality of the chamber music tradition, so it is with great pleasure that we add his name to the already luminous roster of Stoeger Prize recipients.»

Thomas Larcher responds: «All I have learned in music I learned by writing and playing chamber music: listening, breathing, balancing, living and working in and for a community. Chamber Music has always been the heart of music making. It comprises all the facets that music can contain and express, and has always been a field where new ideas have been explored, and where composers have opened doors which were crucial for them. I am very touched and honoured that the Chamber Music Society considers my work to be a part of this great tradition.»

The Chamber Music Society will present Larcher’s «Mumien» for Cello and Piano during the 2015–2016 season of its New Music. Previously, his composition «Kraken» for piano, violin, and cello, was performed on the series in February 2014.