Pereira is 30k richer

Quentin says:

These prizes are nothing to celebrate. We repeatedly see the very rich and successful in the arts receiving monetary prizes for their accomplishments. This is absolutely appallingly! There is nothing wrong with any person receiving a prize, but to award monetary prizes to the already wealthy is disgusting. What should instead be done, is to award a prize, with a list of ten or twenty different charities or causes to whom the recipient may have the money donated in his or her name and the name of the institution or foundation offering the prize. Simply giving monetary prizes, especially in the non-profit arts sector, to the already extremely wealthy is unconscionable and something to be frowned upon.

We recently read that the very controversial and disliked conductor Christoph Eschenbach received the Ernst Von Siemens Prize and was handed a check worth €250,000 in May. This is perhaps the most revolting of all, first for the fact that we recently also learned that Eschenbach is earning nearly $3,000,000 per year for his 12 mediocre weeks leading the National Symphony Orchestra, making him the highest paid conductor on the planet and then learning that he is not appreciated in Washington at all and that it is well known that he is a greedy and money obsessed person. His contract at the NSO will not be renewed and not many are crying over it.

The rich awarding their rich friends ever more money is a sign of a very perverse and unhealthy system, as perverse and unhealthy as those who take the money, never thinking to offer it to charity or music education, or anything else other than feeding their greed and inflated ego.