The Herbert von Karajan Competition for Young Conductors was held in Salzburg

The competition for young conductors named after Herbert von Karajan was held in Salzburg. The winner was a 29-year-old Korean, a former assistant to Simon Rattle, Yun Han-kyul. Attended competitive concerts Alexey Mokrousov.

Sponsors come and go, but festivals remain. Once the competition for young conductors within the framework of the Salzburg Festival was named after the company Nestle, but after its disappearance from the list of patrons and the necessary respite, the competition received – now, apparently, forever – the name of Herbert von Karajan. The competition is not held every year, as before, but once every two years, and in many respects this is a forced decision: it is simply not possible to find such a number of promising conductors to be enough for all competitions in the world. It is no coincidence that the current finalists have already received awards at other competitions.

A total of 323 participants from 54 nationalities entered. First, the jury determined eight semi-finalists (two semi-finalists and six semi-finalists, the press release clarified in the framework of political correctness), in the spring they chose three finalists. The jury is led by Manfred Honeck, Principal Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and other judges include former artistic director of the Berlin Symphony Pamela Rosenberg, former Cleveland Orchestra commercial director Gary Hanson and Salzburg Festival intendant Markus Hinterhäuser.

All finalists are not the first year on the podium. The Austrian Tobias Wegerer received an invitation last season to become the “resident conductor” of the Vienna Volksoper – now such a form of work with young talents has appeared. The theater is now directed by Lotta de Beer (see Kommersant of July 26), Vegerer conducts there not only operas and ballets, but also operettas and musicals. He compiled a program of life-affirming compositions from Kodály’s impressive “Dances from Galanta” and Schnittke’s “Polyphonic Tango” to Schubert’s Third Symphony. The concert requires an aria performed by a participant in the Young Singers Project summer program. Cuban-Colombian tenor Anthony Leon performed Mozart’s Misero! O sogno… Aura, che intorno spiri” is elegant, but Wegerer seems to have not fully mastered the acoustics of the Great Hall of the Mozarteum, where the competition was held. He conducts accurately, but sometimes overly accentuated – the exact opposite of the Belarusian conductor Vitaly Alekseyonok with his deeply romantic style. Alekseyonok, in turn, complicated the competitive task for himself with a non-obvious solution. First, Olga Podgaetskaya’s “Epitaph” for two violins and chamber orchestra (version 2022) and Mozart’s insert aria for Vicente Martin y Soler’s opera “The Miser with a Kind Heart” were performed – here the Ukrainian soprano Daria Kolisan flashed. But Alekseyonok played Beethoven’s Second Symphony and Quiet Music for string orchestra by Valentin Silvestrov mixed up: part from Beethoven, then from Silvestrov, then Beethoven again, and it cannot be said that it turned out unconvincingly. In the finale, the conductor was so inspired that after the final chord of the symphony he began to bow to the audience and thank the orchestra. Then he remembered the unplayed Silvestrov and performed the last part as if for an encore. Perhaps this blurred the impression of the jury from the overall bright work.

As a result, the main prize went to the South Korean conductor and composer Yun Han-kyul. He is also no stranger to the profession: he won the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad, and was Simon Rattle’s assistant during the European tour of the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, and managed to work as the chief conductor of the theater and orchestra in Neubrandenburg. He showed that he could be merrily cocky, like Wegerer – however, the overture to Rossini’s Barber of Seville is difficult to perform otherwise; maybe lyrically-penetratingly, like Alekseyonok, – this is how another Mozart aria sounded (soprano Lilit Davtyan participated in the youth program of the Bolshoi Theater) and a play by contemporary Korean composer Shin Donggun. But Mendelssohn’s “Scottish Symphony” was already similar to Yun Han-Kul himself: with inner space, elaboration of details and density of musical fabric.

The winner received €15,000 in prize money and the right to perform with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra at next year’s festival. The recording of the concert will be released on CD. But the main thing is international recognition and subsequent employment. So, the 2011 laureate Ainars Rubikis headed the Komische Oper in Berlin – he once directed the Novosibirsk Opera House, until the Tannhäuser scandal broke out. The 2015 winner, Italian Lorenzo Viotti, now directs the Dutch National Opera, and German David Afham (2010) the national orchestra and choir of Spain. Maxime Pascal, who won in 2014, performs on the world’s largest stages, from the Paris Opera and La Scala to theaters in Germany, Japan and South America. He is also a frequent guest at the Salzburg Festival – last year his performance with the SWR orchestra of Honegger’s oratorio “Jeanne d’Arc” was an event, in this year he became the conductor-producer of “Greek Passions” by Boguslav Martinu. After the first rehearsals, the musicians of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra praise him very much.

Vitaly Alekseyonok already has an appointment: a month before the Salzburg competition, it was announced that he would become the chief conductor of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein with venues in Düsseldorf and Duisburg. This is how it happens – you didn’t win the competition, but received the award in advance.