With its trombone camel dance and helicopter string quartet, Birmingham Opera Company's staging of Mittwoch aus Licht was one of the most surreal, possibly insane, productions of recent years, but it was considered a triumph – a view shared by judges for the UK's most prestigious classical music awards who on Tuesday night awarded it the annual opera and music theatre prize.
Judges for the Royal Philharmonic Society music awards described the six-hour production as "bold in imagination and brilliant in accomplishment" at the ceremony in central London.
The Stockhausen piece was one of three events staged as part of the London 2012 festival to win prizes on a night that also brought success for mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly, pianist Steven Osborne and composers Gerald Barry and Rebecca Saunders.
The awards were presented against a backdrop of continuing concern about whether the arts will suffer further cuts in George Osborne's June spending review. John Gilhooly, chairman of the Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS), said it had been an outstanding year for classical music despite the difficult economic climate, but he warned against neglecting the "true value of culture".
Gilhooly told the audience: "Making money never has, and never should be, the driving force for great art. The Philharmonic Society sent Beethoven £100 on his deathbed to ease his penury, and commissioned Beethoven's Symphony No 9, not because they expected or even hoped for a blockbuster success, but because they, quite simply, wanted to hear more of his music.
"So, whilst mindful of the absolute need to unite with the government and funders in framing the positive economic arguments for expenditure in the arts, let's not allow creativity, vision, excellence, enjoyment and culture's potential to change lives to be lost in the debate, even in times of austerity."
The success for Birmingham Opera Company was its third RPS music award in 12 years and rewards, perhaps, the ambition and audacity of its artistic director, Graham Vick, in taking on a production so complicated that it had never been staged in full before. As well as a string quartet playing in four helicopters, the work featured two choirs and flying solo instrumentalists. It was commissioned as part of a 12-week festival which marked the finale of the Cultural Olympiad. The other London 2012 festival events to win on Tuesday night were the New Music 20x12 commissions, in the concert series and festivals category, and Proper Job Theatre Company and Scunthorpe Co-operative Junior Choir, which won in the learning and participation category for Cycle Song, a community opera inspired by Albert "Lal" White, a cycling hero of the 1920 Games.
In individual performance categories, British mezzo Connolly won the singer section from a shortlist that also included Bryn Terfel, Bryan Hymel and Alice Coote; pianist Osborne won in the instrumentalist section for "un-showy brilliance, integrity … and the unique magic of his sound"; and young Ukrainian Kirill Karabits, principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, won the award for conductor over Andris Nelsons and Richard Farnes.
The winners in the composing categories were Irish composer Barry in the large-scale composition section, for The Importance of Being Earnest, and Berlin-based Briton Saunders in the chamber-scale section for the "new kind of language" she explores in Fletch, which premiered at Wigmore Hall in November.
Other winners were the Britten Sinfonia in the ensemble category; Classic FM for creative communication; the Heath Quartet in the young artists category; Sheffield-based Music in the Round in chamber music and song; and the Philharmonia Orchestra won the audiences and engagement award for its B Universe of Sound interactive digital installation.
Previously announced honorary awards were given to five music-makers working successfully in challenging environments across the world. Armand Diangienda (Kinshasa, DR of Congo), Ahmad Sarmast (Afghanistan), Rosemary Nalden (Soweto), Ricardo Castro (Bahia, Brazil) and Aaron P Dworkin (USA) all received honorary membership as part of the society's bicentenary celebrations.
