There is, as managing director Marie Ledin points out, no award quite like the Polar Music Prize. Awarded to two laureates each year – one from the classical world, and one more contemporary – its focus is broad, with everyone from Bob Dylan to the Baltic states, Björk to Burt Bacharach, receiving it in previous years.

“In the first years that we did this,” Ledin tells Music Week, “it was very strange for the music industry. It was different worlds. ...