On 5 September Thomas Adès was presented with the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal Award by Sir Simon Rattle, following the UK premiere of Aquifer from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra at the BBC Proms. Listen here to the broadcast.
First presented in 1871, the RPS Gold Medal is awarded for the most outstanding musicianship to the finest musicians of any nationality. It bears the image of Beethoven, to celebrate the close relationship between the composer and the Society which commissioned his Ninth Symphony.
Adès joins an august list of prior recipients including Brahms, Elgar, Henry Wood, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Britten, Bernstein, Messiaen, Boulez, Ligeti, Kathleen Ferrier, and more recently Jessye Norman, Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Janet Baker, Mitsuko Uchida, and John Williams.
On presenting the medal, Simon Rattle said:
The words outrageously gifted might have been invented for Tom, because not only is he a wonderful composer, but a staggering pianist and a magnificent and generous conductor. We wait for each new piece, we never know what it’s going to be, but it always seems to be effortlessly connected to the past, and it always is at the same time new and totally Tom. I suspect that’s the definition of a great composer.
The conductor, who himself received the prize in 2000, has championed Adès’ work for over a quarter of a century. In 1997 he commissioned Asyla for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and has conducted the work internationally over 35 times, including at his 2002 inaugural concert with the Berlin Philharmonic, with whom he later premiered Tevot in 2007. In 2020 Rattle conducted the world premiere of Adès’ Dawn with the London Symphony Orchestra at the BBC Proms.
RPS Chief Executive James Murphy commented:
What extraordinary voyages audiences have been taken on by Thomas’s music, opening new doors to our imagination. He has the gift of an alchemist, making old forms gleam anew…Equally radiant are his achievements as a pianist and conductor, and the treasured associations…with the Boston Symphony, The Hallé and Vienna Philharmonic, as well as The Met in New York, Aldeburgh Festival, and Paris Opera. Long may he keep enchanting us.
Adès’ previous awards include the 2015 Léonie Sonning Music Prize, the Leoš Janáček Award, and the Grawemeyer Award (2000), of which he was the youngest ever recipient. In 2023 he was awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge prize, and in 2018 a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
This season Adès continues his artistic residencies with the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Hallé, including the world premiere of an extended version of his choral-orchestral epic America, which Adès will also conduct with the Cleveland Orchestra. In November 2024 he will be the subject of a focus at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Aquifer received its Irish premiere at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on 7 September, from Rattle and the BRSO; it receives its Finnish premiere from Nicholas Collon and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra on 11 October.