There now came at least one concrete sign that Schoeck had not been wholly ostracized at home. This was the “Zurich Music Prize,” a newly created award of which Schoeck was made the first recipient. The presentation took place on 21 November 1943 and was accompanied by a short recital of Schoeck's songs, in which he accompanied the contralto Elisabeth Gehri, a superb singer whom he rightly regarded as a worthy successor to Durigo. (The extant recording of the event shows both pianist and singer at the height of their powers). The laudatio was given by the eminent Goethe scholar Emil Staiger. If this occasion served to lift Schoeck's spirits, then they will have been cast down again when news came through of the Allied bombing raid that was made on Leipzig in the early hours of 4 December. Besides costing almost two thousand lives, the raid destroyed most of the city center and the whole of the publishing district. The houses of two of Schoeck's publishers, Hug and Breitkopf & Härtel, were among those destroyed, and all their stock was burned. The year's bad news was not yet over, for Ilona Durigo died in her native Budapest at Christmas, aged only 62. She had in fact visited Switzerland just a few weeks earlier (her son still lived in Zurich), and had given her final Swiss recital in Wettingen on 5 September.