11th edition, 2021
August 2021
11th International Conducting Competition
Jeunesses Musicales Bucharest
2021
This project represents the implementing in Romania, by ELITE ART Club UNESCO (in its capacity as sole Romanian representative of Jeunesses Musicales International http://jmi.net/), of the conducting competition initiated by Jeunesses Musicales International, one of the most renowned and appreciated classical music competitions for young people in the world, with a history of over 50 years.
The aim of the International Conducting Competition Jeunesses Musicales Bucharest is to create opportunities for young musicians from all over the world in order to increase their participation in the European institutions of creation. As such, the performance opportunities offered by the International Conducting Competition Jeunesses Musicales Bucharest will promote not only music and young talents but will naturally lead to a significant circulation of the artistic works and cultural products.
In addition to its main goal, the competition wishes to stimulate mutual interaction and create a real dialogue between the young musicians which will permit them to learn from one another, to discover not only their own abilities but also facts about their socio-cultural past thus promoting intercultural dialogue.
The general objective of the International Conducting Competition Jeunesses Musicales Bucharest is to ensure transborder collaboration among young people: through the competition’s program and all the included events we wish to create a meeting and interpretation space with as many participants as possible, from different environments thus leading to awareness regarding cultural diversity and strengthening the intercultural dialogue.
Nicolò Umberto Foron
1st Prize
Nicolò Umberto Foron recently became the principal assistant Conductor of the Ensemble intercontemporain in Paris.
Discovered at a young age, the young Italo-German conductor, pianist and composer has been
praised for his versatile concert programmes and efficient rehearsals. During the years of his
artistic development, he has gathered extensive experience of a wide symphonic, operatic and
contemporary repertoire. He was born in 1998 in Genoa, Italy into a musical family. He first
started studying the piano; at the age of 9 he became a student of Karl-Heinz Kämmerling from the University of Hannover and at the age of 14 a student of Anatol Ugorski.
In addition to the piano, he was also greatly supported in conducting. Discovered at the age of 10 by Jorma Panula, Nicolò has studied conducting with him for the following years . At the age of 15, he was able to assist Lorin Maazel; consequently, he was invited by Bernhard Haitink to his masterclass at the Luzern Festival. At the age of 16 Nicolò started to study conducting at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, furthermore at the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of London.
He has been invited regularly by Peter Eötvös at the Budapest Music Center. In spite of his young age he had the possibility to work with important orchestras such as Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Symfonieorkest Vlaanderen, Het Residentie Orkest, Sinfonia Rotterdam, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and London Symphony Orchestra. He had the
pleasure of recording Beethoven Symphony No 7 for the Royal College at the renowned Abbey Road Studios in London.
Nicolò assisted Riccardo Muti for Le nozze di Figaro culminating in conducting the final concert at Ravenna. He conducted at the Opera Forward Festival, the Grachtenfestival, the National Opera and the Academy of Theater and Dance in Amsterdam. In 2021 he made his debut with the North-Netherlands-Orchestra conducting the world premiere of Jan Peter de Graaff’s cello concerto at the Groningen-Oosterpoort Zaal, Muziekgebouw-Amsterdam and Tivoli Vredenburg-Utrecht.
In the summer of 2021 followed his debut at Highclere Castle Festival and the Newbury Spring Festival. Later in the year he will conduct at the Frauenkirche Dresden and Dresden Conservatory, and have a debut at the Christmas concert at St. James’s Church, Piccadilly, London.
Nicolò often performs as a concert pianist with his younger sister, violinist Mira Marie Foron.
He won multiple awards like the Het Kersjes Fonds for the National Master of Orchestral Conducting, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, the Miele Foundation, the Talent Unlimited Foundation, the Reintamm Award, the Kathleen Trust Award, the Elie Dangoor Award, the Jonathan Freeman-Attwood Bicentenary scholarship and the DAAD.
David Bui
2nd Prize
David Bui, born in Germany, graduated from the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin and simultaneously made his debut with the Konzerthaus Orchester Berlin in 2017. Since then he continued his studies in the masters program under the guidance of Prof. Christian Ehwald and Prof. Hans-Dieter Baum.
An ERASMUS exchange program has led him to the Norwegian Academy of Music where he studied with Prof. Ole Kristian Ruud and Prof. Sigmund Thorp in the fall semester 2019. In addition to his studies David Bui has participated in several festivals around the world. He took part in the Bartók Festival in Szombathely, Hungary, the Mendelssohn Festival in Hamburg, Germany and the PRISMA Festival in British Columbia Canada, where he was assistant conductor.
Also he was invited to participate in the Pärnu Festival in Tallinn, Estonia, where he studied with Paavo, Neeme and Kristjan Järvi and Leonid Grin and for which he received a scholarship from the DAAD-PROMOS-Project-Sponsorship. Moreover David Bui was one of the few students selected by Maestro Riccardo Muti himself in a live-audition to study with him for the 2019 edition of the Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy in Ravenna, Italy.
During his studies David Bui has conducted the Brandenburger Symphoniker, the Karlovarsky Symfonicky Orchestr, the Filharmonia Zielonogórska as the representative of Germany at the Musikfesttage „an der Oder” amongst others. In early 2019 he made his debut with the Hamburger Camerata in the world famous Elbphilharmonie.
Further masterclasses have led him to Maestro Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Prof. Johannes Schlaefli, Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr and Prof. Nicolás Pasquet.
Since 2017 David Bui is the artistic director of Neues Kammerorchester Wedding, an ensemble of the music school Fanny Hensel – Berlin.
As of April 2019 David Bui has been a fellow of the Dirigentenforum. He assisted Lothar Zagrosek at the Bundesjugendorchester in January 2020 and was finalist at the Kritsche Orchester® in Berlin, Germany where he worked with Maestro Lutz Köhler.
Hermes Helfricht
3rd prize
German conductor Hermes Helfricht, is a versatile and dynamic young artist with footprints in both symphonic and operatic repertoires. He has collaborated with many European orchestras and was repeatedly entrusted with world premieres. In 2018 he was named the 1st Kapellmeister at Bonn Opera House.
In 2021 he won the 2nd Prize in the Lanyi International Conducting Competition. Hermes made his conducting debut in 2013 at the Bruckner Orchester Linz (Austria) with an all Italian program and performed pieces by Rossini, Mascagni, Verdi and Puccini. In Germany, he has worked with the Bochum Symphoniker, the Staatskapelle Halle, Brandenburg State Orchestra Frankfurt, the Philharmonic Orchestra Heidelberg, the Mecklenburgische Staatskapelle Schwerin, the Neubrandenburg Philharmonic, the Kammerakademie Potsdam and the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn. He has had engagements with major orchestras such as the Vanemuine Symphony Orchestra (Estonia), the Philharmonic Zielona Gora (Poland) and the North Bohemian Philharmonic Teplice at the Young Prague Festival (Czech Republic). Hermes Helfricht has been the assistant conductor of the Spanish National Youth Orchestra from 2014 to 2016 and performed two world premieres, Maui by Alejandro Moreno and La Rutina de lo Invisible by Alvaro Martinez Leon. In 2015 he conducted the “Orchester 1770” at the Musikakademie Rheinsberg.
He led the Kammerphilharmonie Graubünden in a production of Die Fledermaus at the Schlossoper Haldenstein. In the 2015/16 season, Hermes served as Kapellmeister at Theater Erfurt and led performances of Carmen, Das Land des Lächelns and Evita. In February 2016 he made his debut with Eugen Onegin at the Theater St. Gallen (Switzerland) and was appointed 1st Kapellmeister. There he conducted Le nozze di Figaro, Fidelio, Nabucco, Tosca, La Bohème and Le Vin herbé. In the 2017/18 season, Helfricht was invited to conduct symphony concerts with Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra and Magdeburg Philharmonic. Furthermore he appeared with the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn and the Württemberg Philharmonic Reutlingen. The following year he had debuts with the Bremen Philharmonic Orchestra and the State Philharmonic Rheinland-Pfalz. Furthermore he conducted the StateYouthOrchestra Schleswig-Holstein and the Württemberg Philharmonic Reutlingen. For the season 2018/19 Hermes Helfricht worked as 1st Kapellmeister for the Bonn Opera House. There he conducted his own productions of Ponchielli’s La Gioconda, Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair, Viktor Ullman’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis, Scarrinos Infinito Nero as well as performances of Lohengrin, Le nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte, Hänsel und Gretel, Madama Butterfly and West Side Story. He created a new version of Cavalli’s La Calisto which premiered in October 2020 and was highly acclaimed by the press. Upcoming engagements in 2021 include invitations to Camerata Hamburg, and Elbland Philharmonic Sachsen. Moreover Hermes will return to the Württemberg Philharmonic Reutlingen and will conduct various concerts with the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn.
Born in 1992 in Radebeul near Dresden, Hermes Helfricht began taking piano lessons at age of five. He was regularly awarded prizes at youth music competitions. For nine years he was a member of the Kreuzchor Dresden and made guest appearances as a boy soloist in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at the Komische Oper Berlin. From 2008 to 2010 he was a choral prefect for the renowned Kreuzkantor Roderich Kreile and in 2010, was awarded the prestigious Rudolf Mauersberger scholarship. At the University of the Arts in Berlin, he studied orchestral conducting with Lutz Köhler and Steven Sloane and played piano trios and quartets in the Artemis Quartet’s chamber music class. Additionally, he is an enthusiastic lied-accompanist and received valuable support from his late mentor Ks. Peter Schreier. From 2013 until 2018, Hermes Helfricht has been a scholarship recipient in the German Music Council’s DIRIGENTENFORUM where he studied with esteemed international conductors.
Cristian Spătaru
Prize for the Best Romanian Conductor
Cristian Spătaru, born on 18 January 1993 in Chișinău, Republic of Moldova, started studying music when he was 8 years old. He started his musical career with piano and music theory lessons, as well as singing in the choir.
He went to a music college in 2008 where he studied Musicology and Composition. He received the 1st Place at the National Composition Competition in Republic of Moldova three times in a row. Cristian started working with the Moldavian National Youth Orchestra for which he composed 5 vocal-, choral-, orchestral works and did more 100+ orchestrations.
In 2013 he was accepted to the Academy of Music in Chișinău where he studied composition with Pavel Rivilis. At the same time he worked with the National Youth Orchestra as a composer and conductor.
The following year he left his home country for Vienna where he studied at the University of Music and performing Arts, Magister Artium Degree in Composition with Michael Jarrell. In 2016 he began a second Magister Artium Degree in Conducting with Mark Stringer at the same institution.
