“Everywhere in the world you can find people using culture to strengthen society.”
– Cellist Yo-Yo Ma

World-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma has won the prestigious 2022 Birgit Nilsson Prize for his outstanding and ongoing contributions to music. The $US1 million prize, classical music’s richest, was presented by Sweden’s His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf at a glittering ceremony  in Stockholm on Tuesday 18 October.

Yo-Yo Ma receives the 2022 Birgit Nilsson Prize. Photo © Markus Gårder

Ma is the first instrumentalist to be honoured with the triennial prize, which is funded from the estate of legendary Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson, who died in 2005.

Susanne Rydén, of the Royal Swedish Academy of the Arts — which, now in its 250th year, administers the prize — says Ma was chosen in recognition of his “artistic values”.

“In Yo-Yo Ma we have someone who has for so many years stayed at the highest level of performance,” Rydén said.

Born in 1955 in Paris to Chinese parents, Ma was just four when he started to learn cello from his father. The family moved to New York and he became a student of the...