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The EVS Music Award is 'like the Nobel Prize of Music', according to its organizers. The audience who had come to honor Brendel included everyone who is anyone in European music, including Nike Wagner, who travelled to Munich especially for the event. Brendel, it was felt by everyone present, is a deserving recipient and the award is long overdue. Wieland Schmied, Chairman of the Siemens Music Award Foundation, said: 'It is never too late and better late than never.'

The EVS Music Award goes hand in hand with some 1.15 million euros in grants for young composers, young performers, and to support music projects of various kinds. Among the recipients of this year's grant was the South Bank Centre/Royal Festival Hall, which received a grant to support the performances of works by Luciano Berio, who died last year and was the 1989 EVS Music Award winner.

The Festival d'Automne in Paris also received a grant to support its upcoming performance of Brian Ferneyhough's opera Shadowlands, the world première of which is in Munich on 25 May 2004. The opera will then be performed again in Paris, between 27 and 31 October, as part of the Paris Autumn Music Festival. In September 2005, Shadowlands can be seen in London, at Sadler's Wells. Ferneyhough is British and teaches in the United States.

The Ensemble Sospeso from New York received a grant to help finance its upcoming December 2004 performances of Israel female composer Chaya Czernowin (who received the support grant for contemporary composers in 2003). The Ensemble Sospeso has been supporting the works of contemporary composers for many years and aims to make their works known across North America.

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