Sir John Eliot Gardiner receives Liszt Academy doctorate

Sir John Eliot Gardiner has this week been awarded an honorary doctorate from the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music. The conductor is the first recipient of the award since violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who was honoured 20 years ago.

Gardiner accepted the certificate from Liszt Academy president Dr Andrea Vigh at a ceremony held at the university’s Budapest home. The ceremony also featured pianist and Liszt Academy doctoral student, Fülöp Ránki, who performed works by Liszt and Bartók with violinist and Academy associate professor Ádám Banda.

In her laudation, the Academy’s professor emeritus, Katalin Komlós, described Gardiner as ’a musician of the highest order: the vitality and the magnetism of his performances transmit the emotions, thoughts, and passions of the music to the members of his ensembles, and through them, to audiences around the world.’

Komlós added that said the honorary doctorate, which is only given in exceptional circumstances, ’represent[s] the respect and gratitude of all music-lovers of Hungary, who have received an invaluable portion of the living tradition of European cultural history through the artistry of Sir John Eliot Gardiner.’ You can read her full laudation here.

As well as founding and conducting the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire and Romantique, Gardiner regularly conducts leading orchestras and is music director of the London Symphony Orchestra. As well as receiving more Gramophone Awards than any other living artist, he also holds two Grammy awards and a Diapason d'Or.

Gardiner will add his honorary doctorate from the Liszt Academy to doctorates from the Royal College of Music, New England Conservatory of Music, the universities of Lyon, Cremona, St Andrews and King’s College, Cambridge.

Accepting his award, Gardiner said: ‘There are honours one accepts with a thank you, but the title of Honorary Doctor of Liszt Academy is very meaningful, very profound and a huge honour due to the distinguished history of Liszt Academy and the whole tradition of Hungarian music, which is immensely important and valuable, so I am very grateful.’