Page 94 - FINAL_RPS Awards 2021 Coverage Book_Full (2)

ENO Director of Strategy and Learning & Participation Jenny Mollica receives the
2021 RPS Impact Award for ENO Breathe (Photo by Mark Allan)

The BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s new principal conductor Ryan Bancroft is
also among the winners, following a highly successful first year in his new post. In
awarding Bancroft the Conductor Award, the RPS paid tribute to his ‘electrifying
concerts invigorating the orchestra’s repertoire’. Despite taking on the position at the
height of the Covid-19 pandemic, with orchestras unable to perform to live
audiences, Bancroft has thrived. ‘Leading various ensembles of the orchestra’s
musicians has allowed me to get to know them on an individual basis,’ he told BBC
Music Magazine for the upcoming Christmas issue. ‘Orchestras are thought of as
monoliths, but they’re not. They’re groups of people made up of different ideas and
interests.’

The Young Artist Prize this year goes to The Hermes Experiment, with its surprising
instrumental line-up of soprano, clarinet, double bass and harp. Together, the
ensemble has commissioned more than 50 new works, and recently released Song,
its second album on Delphian Records. Héloise Werner, the group’s soprano and co-
founder, spoke to Fiona Maddocks in the November issue of BBC Music Magazine. ‘I
love the variety of styles and eras,’ she says. ‘But I also love that as musicians in this
group we are all equal. The voice might seem the important part but I am part of the
whole texture. And because there’s no repertoire for this combination, we create as
we go.’

After Sheku Kanneh-Mason took home this same prize at last year’s RPS Awards,
his mother Kadiatu is celebrated in this year’s Storytelling Prize for her book House
of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons.