RPS Music Awards

Philip Langridge - tenor, Royal Philharmonic Society Council Member and friend - was honoured at this year's RPS Music Awards.

Philip Langridge won the first ever RPS Music Award for Singer in 1989, and was still singing at the peak of his powers throughout his 70th birthday year.  He was named, posthumously, as the winner of the RPS Singer award for the “humanity” that he brought to the role of Aschenbach in Death in Venice at the 2009 St Endellion Festival. Commenting on Langridge, who was presented with the award shortly before his death in March, the jury said that he was “an artist admired for his extraordinary versatility and loved for his musical and professional generosity – to colleagues and, especially, to young artists starting out – as well as to audiences… he is, first and last, an exemplary musician.”

Philip Langridge died on 5 March 2010. He was one of the outstanding operatic tenors of our time and a staunch member of the Royal Philharmonic Society Council, the governing body of the Society. A versatile performer, he was particularly renowned for his appearances in opera and oratorio, in repertoire ranging from Monteverdi and Mozart to Britten, Harrison Birtwistle and Thomas Adès, taking in Handel, Tippett, Stravinsky, Janacek, Schoenberg and others on the way.

Philip's many other honours include the Worshipful Company of Musicians’ Santay Award, the NFMS/Charles Groves Prize 2001 and two Grammy Awards.  He was appointed a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 1994.  Philip was beloved by his colleagues for his generosity and zest for life, and by younger artists to whom he gave so much encouragement and support through his work with the RPS, as a Trustee of  YCAT (Young Concert Artists Trust) and through his communication masterclasses.