Italian conductor Giuseppe Mengoli has emerged because the winner of this 12 months’s Mahler Competitors, taking residence a 30,000-euro prize pot.

Second place went to Japanese-American conductor Taichi Fukumura, whereas German conductor Georg Köhler got here third.

A brand new prize for 2023, ‘Greatest Conducting of a Up to date Composition’, went to American conductor Kevin Fitzgerald.

The repertoire of the competitors, which befell in Bamberg, Germany from 7 to 13 July, included Mahler‘s Symphony No. 7, from which totally different actions had been performed in every spherical. Further repertoire included Haydn’s Symphony No. 92, Berg’s Seven Early Songs and Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto.

The ultimate live performance takes place on 15 July, and can function winner Mengoli conducting the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, plus a efficiency from baritone Thomas Hampson.

Mengoli has labored as assistant conductor on the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and the Netherlands Nationwide Opera underneath Lorenzo Viotti. This spring, he assisted the inventive workforce of the Orchestre Nationwide de France within the new manufacturing of Puccini‘s La bohème on the Theatre de Champs-Elysee, supporting Viotti and the ensemble in the course of the rehearsal section.

In 2022, Mengoli was concertmaster for the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra’s summer season tour, with conductors Teodor Currentzis and Jukka-Pekka Saraste.

Extra candidates than ever earlier than utilized for the 2023 competitors: with 350 legitimate functions (282 male, 67 feminine and one various). Of those, 16 male and 4 feminine conductors had been invited to compete on the finals in Bamberg.

The Mahler Competitors was based by the Bamberg Symphony and its then principal conductor Jonathan Nott in 2004, and takes place each three years.

The patron of each the Competitors and the Mahler Basis is Marina Mahler, the composer’s granddaughter. Czech conductor and Bamber Symphony principal conductor Jakub Hrůša is jury president.

Pic: Marian Lenhard