Sergey Akimov, Gábor Káli and Erina Yashima – the three finalists will compete during the Award Concert Weekend for the 2018 prize. Der Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award takes place this year for the 9th time. The interest shown in the competition was tremendous: 90 candidates from 27 countries applied for the Award, which has developed into one of the most coveted international honours for young conductors. The previous year’s winner, Kerem Hasan, who currently works as associate conductor at the Welsh National Opera, conducts his Prize Winner’s Concert at the Felsenreitschule on August 5.
The jury with three finalist, all photos Salzburger Festspiele /Anne Zeuner
The jury chaired by Dennis Russell Davies selected nine candidates among the 90 applicants. Yesterday the young conductors showed their skills to the jury presenting two contemporary compositions each with the österreichisches ensemble für neue musik (œnm). The obligatory piece was Arnold Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 in E major Op. 9 for 15 solo instruments; for their second piece, candidates were given their choice among the following three works selected by the jury:
Pierre Boulez (Dérive 1 for 6 instruments), Paul Hindemith (Chamber music for 12 solo instruments) and Beat Furrer (Gaspra for Ensemble).
The Jury’s Decision
“Gratified and impressed by the level of the 7 candidates that we had, and we had a long discussion. We are confident that the three that we selected for the finals in August will conduct very good concerts and that they are on the threshold of starting what we all hope will be a good career,” declared the jury’s chairman, Dennis Russell Davies.
“Discovering and supporting young talents is one of the most exciting and also most beautiful tasks of cultural institutions. Normally, it is very hard for young conductors to find the right communication platform and to have their voices heard. Besides the opportunity to conduct concerts during the Salzburg Festival, it is the aim of the “Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award” to make it easier for exceptionally talented young conductors to launch their careers”, said Artistic Director of the Salzburg Festival Markus Hinterhäuser.
Gábor Káli, Erina Yashima and Sergey Akimov
Finalists‘ Statements
Sergey Akimov (July 1989):
“Every young conductor wants to take part in the Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award and I’m very happy to be part of it. I see myself not only as continuing traditions, but also as an innovator. I think the mission of today’s conductors is to discover old, forgotten works and new music just written. Regarding the purpose of my life – to improve this world.”
Sergey Akimov
Sergey Akimov, born in 1989 in Moscow (Russia), had his first conducting lessons at the age of 13. In 2011 he became a student of the P.I.Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, where he studied with Gennady Rozhdestvensky and graduated with outstanding results. During the years of studying he worked in the Concert orchestra of Moscow Conservatory, where he assisted G. Rozhdestvensky, Y. Temirkanov, V. Jurowsky and others. In 2014 he gained experience as a guest conductor in Yakutsk Opera and Ballet Theatre, where he conducted following operas – Turandot and Madama Butterfly by Puccini and Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky. One year later he collaborated with Montpellier Opera theatre. After his graduation he was invited to the Moscow Operetta Theatre, where he already conducted such pieces as Die Fledermaus, Ball im Savoy, Die lustige Witwe and others. In 2017 he participated in the Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy, where he worked on Aida by Giuseppe Verdi. In Russia Akimov became famous as an extraordinary conductor, who provides special and high-level concert programmes with his chamber orchestra “Affrettando“. He made the first Russian Performance of the chamber arrangement of The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky, as well as the first Russian performance of Gershwin’s opera Blue Monday. Akimov is also well-known as an author of various arrangements – starting with arrangements of symphonic pieces for the chamber orchestra, continuing with orchestrations of famous popular music and as an multi-instrumentalist.
Gábor Káli (August 1982):
“It is an acknowledgement and it gives me great happiness to take part in the Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award. My energy and inner instinct always motivate me to go on and become better and better as a musician and conductor. Music is a wonderful, extraordinary language through which I have to speak to other people and tell them about the difference between good and bad, also telling them about what happens in between.”
Gábor Káli
Born in Budapest, Hungary, Gábor Káli began playing the piano and the violin at an early age before graduating as a solo pianist from the Béla Bartók Conservatory in Budapest in 2001. He began studying conducting at the Franz Liszt academy of Music in Budapest. In 2004 he became an Erasmus conducting student at the University of Arts in Berlin, where he in 2008 finished his studies with a diploma. He was chosen as a member of the Conducting Forum of the German Music Council (Dirigentenforum), which made it possible for him to participate in conducting courses given by Kurt Masur, Peter Eötvös, Bernard Haitink, Colin Matters, Sian Edwards and Zoltán Peskó. After finishing his studies he worked for two years as a répétiteur and conductor at the City Opera in Aachen. As Head Conductor of the Aachener Youth Orchestra he conducted the Premiere of Henze’s Pollicino in a production with 200 children from various schools and as an assistant to Maestro Marcus Bosch he also prepared several other Opera productions. Since 2011 he has been the 2nd Conductor and the Assistant to the Musical Director at the Staatstheater in Nürnberg, where he conducted an enormous number of opera, operetta, musical, ballet and concert performances with the Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg. In the season 2015/2016 he continued his work in Nürnberg as Assistant Musical Director and Principal Conductor. In the season 2018 he will be Assistant to Maestro Iván Fischer at Konzerthaus Orchester Berlin and also at Budapest Festival Orchestra. On 14th January 2018 he won the 1. Hong Kong International Conducting Competition in Hong Kong.
Erina Yashima (July 1986):
“The Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award is one of the most prestigious competitions for conductors, and it is a great honour to be chosen as a finalist. Music is for me a way to connect and communicate with people on stage and in the audience, inside and also outside of concert halls. Music has always been part of my life.”
Erina Yashima
German-born conductor Erina Yashima began her musical studies at age fourteen at the Institute for the Early Advancement of the Musically Gifted (IFF) in Hanover as a precollege piano student. After studying conducting in Freiburg and in Vienna, she completed her concert exam in conducting at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. Yashima served as répétiteur with conducting duties at the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern, where she made her conducting debut in 2015. From 2013 to 2015, she was music director of the Freies Student Orchestra in Rostock. She was given the Outstanding Excellence Award by the Rheinsberg Music Academy for the opera production she conducted there. Her guest conducting experiences also include a collaboration with El Sistema in Venezuela, where she worked with two youth orchestras. Yashima was a participant in Riccardo Muti’s Italian Opera Academy at the Ravenna Festival in 2015. That same year, she was selected by Bernard Haitink to take part in his conducting master class during the Lucerne Festival. She was also chosen as one of the top-three finalists at the Interaktion Conductors’ Workshop by members of the Critical Orchestra. During the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Gianluigi Gelmetti awarded her a diploma of merit and invited her to conduct the Orchestra Sinfonica di Sanremo. Yashima made her podium debut at the Salzburg Festival with Der Schauspieldirektor, the festival’s opera production for children, in July 2017. She made her Italian opera debut earlier that year with Rossini’s La Cenerentola and the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra in Lucca and Ravenna, and led the production again in Piacenza in February 2018. During the 2017 Cluj Music Festival in Romania, Yashima conducted the Transylvanian State Philharmonic Orchestra of Cluj-Napoca.
Award Concert Weekend
The Award Concert Weekend takes place during the Salzburg Festival’s summer season for the forth time this year. The three finalists conduct the Camerata Salzburg at the Mozarteum Foundation. The concert programmes will be chosen together with the candidates and announced in June 2018. Once again, a particular focus is on contemporary music. As in previous years, the public is invited to attend the Award Concert Weekend and observe the proceedings determining who receives the Award and the sum of € 15,000 which it includes.
Concert Dates
Friday, August 3, 2018, 3 pm – Gábor Káli
Saturday, August 4, 2018, 3 pm – Sergey Akimov
Sunday, 5. August 2018, 3 pm – Erina Yashima
After the third concert, the jury chaired by Dennis Russell Davies will announce the winner of the Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award 2018. The Prize Winner’s Concert will take place at the 2019 Salzburg Festival, featuring a selected orchestra as well as a rising young soloist performing under the winner’s baton at the Felsenreitschule.
Kerem Hasan, photo Andreas Kolarik
Kerem Hasan, winner of the 2017 Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award, conducts the ORF Symphony Orchestra Vienna in a Festival concert at the Felsenreitschule on August 5. The programme features works by Jean Sibelius and Dmitri Shostakovich. The soloist will be the 34-year-old german-american violinist Augustin. (After Press materials).
https://marijanzlobec.wordpress.com/2017/08/07/the-2017-winner-is-young-conductor-kerem-hasan/
Marijan Zlobec