RPS awards Gold Medal to Arvo Pärt

Composer Arvo Pärt has been awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society’s highest honour, the RPS Gold Medal. The medal was presented last week at the Arvo Pärt Centre in the composer’s homeland Estonia by RPS chair Angela Dixon and chief executive James Murphy.

The gold medal, which is engraved with the image of Beethoven, to celebrate the close relationship between the composer and the Society, was given to Pärt at a ceremony attended by the composer’s son Michael and Ify Agboola, deputy head of mission at the British Embassy in Tallinn and Tõnu Kaljuste, the artistic director and chief conductor of the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir.

In his speech at the medal ceremony Michael Pärt said: ‘I would like to express our deepest gratitude for this prestigious recognition. Music is not just about sound, but a deep connection between the past and the present, between cultures and traditions, and between individual experiences… My father’s music, though distinctly his own, resonates with the simplicity and spiritual depth found in early English music, returning to the fundamentals, to the beauty of a single note, a single word, or a single phrase.’ 

First presented in 1871, the RPS Gold Medal is awarded ‘for the most outstanding musicianship to the finest musicians of any nationality’. Arvo Pärt joins a long legacy of previous winners including Brahms, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Britten, Bernstein, Messiaen, Boulez, Ligeti, Myra Hess, Kathleen Ferrier, and more recently Jessye Norman, Nikolaus Harnoncourt Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Janet Baker, Simon Rattle, Mitsuko Uchida and Thomas Adès, who received his medal onstage at the BBC Proms earlier this month.

RPS chief executive Angela Dixon said: ‘Arvo, your music has touched the world. We salute you for your political courage which has demonstrated to today’s young composers what power their own voices can have. We treasure the spiritual purity of your music, drawn from your own faith and the sacred music of times past, speaking to listeners from so many walks of life, resonating across borders.’