Composer Wolfgang Rihm has won the University of Louisville’s Grawemeyer award for his 15-minute work In-Schrift 2. The award, worth $100,000, is given annually for outstanding work in music composition. Rihm’s piece was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic last year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the opening of Hans Scharoun’s Philharmonie, the city’s iconic concert hall.

But the award also, surely, honours the achievement of the 62-year-old composer whose dauntless creativity is one of the most fecund, fascinating, and ferociously dynamic, unpredictable, and exciting phenomena in contemporary music. So by way of celebration, why not turn today into your own unique Rihm-Tag by creating your own playlist from his gigantic output: here’s my selection to get you started.

Dark brilliance from the teenage composer

The quartet canon reclaimed and revitalised

Rihm’s most ambitious piano work