10th edition, 2019
August 2019
10th International Conducting Competition
Jeunesses Musicales Bucharest
2019
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.
Yifan SUN, China
1st Prize
At the present, Yifan Sun is a senior conducting student at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Conducting is his major and he studies under the guise of Prof. Guoyong Zhang and Prof. Daye Lin while at the same time pursuing his piano studies as his second undergraduate major.
As a piano major Yifan Sun was accepted to the primary school affiliated to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 2005 and later on to the middle school affiliated to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 2008 – in both cases he had the highest score. In 2012, Yifan won the first prize in the piano section of the Fifth Asian Youth Music Competition. From 2005 to 2014, he won numerous scholarships, some of them several times such as the Niu Ende scholarship, the Tang Junyuan scholarship and the YAMAHA music scholarship.
Yifan was admitted in the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 2014. He had the top score and chose conducting as his major. In 2016, he attended the opening ceremony of Shanghai Disney as the music assistant for Tandun, one of the most famous Chinese composers. Since 2014 he has conducted numerous orchestras such as the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, the Shanghai Opera House Orchestra, the Qingdao Symphony Orchestra, the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra, the Hangzhou Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hebei Symphony Orchestra, the Sichuan Symphony Orchestra, the Gansu Opera Hause and the Guiyang Symphony Orchestra, etc.
In recent years, he has participated in the rehearsals for several opera works of the Shanghai Opera House as an assistant conductor. In August 2018, he took part in the 9th International Conducting Competition Jeunesses Musicales Bucharest and he was selected as one of the twelve semifinalists. He won the national scholarship for the 2017-2018 academic year. He has participated in masterclasses with Jorma Panula, John Nelson, Thomas Sanderling, Ronald Zollmann, Valerio Paperi and was well appraised by the masters.
Jascha GRAF VON DER GOLTZ, Germany
2nd Prize
Jascha von der Goltz was born in 1994 in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany.
He’s not only a gifted pianist but he has also gained a lot of experience playing in many orchestras as a cellist and percussionist. Born in a family of musicians, he has been in constant contact with orchestral repertory for his entire life. As his parents both lead a well known historical orchestra he got used to the interpretative process and the intense thinking it presumes at a very early age.
He focused on percussion until the age of 16, won several 1st prizes at the renowned competition “Jugend Musiziert” in Germany and therefore received many scholarships from “Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben”, “BGV” and “Sparkasse”. Furthermore he was awarded with the “junior artist of the year” prize by “Zelt-Musik-Festival”.
Being a member of the “Landesjugenorchester Baden-Württemberg” for two years he was inspired by conductor Christoph Wyneken and decided to become a conductor.
After doing a social voluntary service in Nicaragua for one year he started his studies in 2015 at the Freiburg Conservatory where he studies music and conducting with composer Massimiliano Matesic and conductor Scott Sandmeier.
Since then he has conducted orchestras such as Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn, Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim, South Danish Philharmonic, Duna Symphony Orchestra Budapest, Pazardzhik Symphony Orchestra, Academic Orchestra Freiburg and many others.
He continues his work as percussionist and cellist with orchestras such as Freiburger Barockorchester, Symphonieorchester Crescendo and others.
From 2016 to 2017 he was chief conductor of “Junges Kammerorchester Freiburg”.
Since August 2018 he has been studying with Ole Kristian Ruud and Sigmund Thorp at the Norwegian Academy of Music Oslo. In order to enrich his studies, he attended masterclasses with many conductors, among them Vasily Petrenko, Nicolás Pasquet, Jorma Panula and others.
His repertoire ranges from early baroque to contemporary music.
Chunyi ZHAO, China
3rd prize
Chunyi Zhao started to play the violin at the age of four. When she was nine, she was admitted to the Central Conservatory of Music in China where she studied for 10 years. She graduated from the National University of Singapore – Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music and she studied violin with Zhang Hong, Zhao Wei, Lin Yao Ji, Tang Wei Jian, Li Da
and Ng Yu-Ying. She studied conducting with Jason Lai and Chan Tze Law. She won the first prize in the Fifth and the Sixth National Violin Competition for Youth and Children in China. She is also interested in chamber and ensemble playing.
After taking a conducting class in 2015, she discovered that it was her passion and took the Advance Conducting module in the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music. In order to
express music better, she also took voice studies as a minor.
During her studies at the conservatory, she was assigned to play a string trio with the members from Orchestre des Champs- Élysées. She performed with maestro Gabor Takács- Nagy and the world-renowned pianist Andras Schiff in a school concert.
She was invited to play in the Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) as the
Concertmaster in one of the concert series and she was also invited to conduct
the violin sectional rehearsals and the strings sectional rehearsals.
Since July 2017 she has been studying conducting with Sicong Bian in Shenyang.
In October 2018 she was the only applicant who was accepted for Bachelor Studies in orchestra conducting with Prof. Christian Ehwald and opera conducting with Prof. Alexander Vitlin at the Hanns Eisler Academy for Music in Berlin. She has conducted Frankfurt Oder Orchestra and the Karlovy Vary Orchestra.
She has participated in conducting and violin masterclasses with Christian Ehwald, Alexander Vitlin, Andrew Litton, Ani Schnarch, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Ulf Hoelscher, Qian Zhou, Takashi Shimizu and David Takeno.
Cristian Spătaru
Prize for the Best Ranked Romanian Conductor
Cristian Spataru was born in 1993 in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova. He started studying music when he was 8 years old when he took his first piano and music theory lessons and sung in the choir. In 2008 he went to the Music College.
Cristian won three times in a row the 1st prize in the National Composition Competition in Moldova. He worked with the National Youth Orchestra for which he composed 5 works and did more than 150 orchestrations.
In 2013 he started his studies at the Academy of Music in Chisinau where he studied
composition with Pavel Rivilis. At 21 years old he began his Magister Artium Degree in Composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna where he is currently in his 6th year, studying with Michael Jarrell. In 2016 he starts his Magister Artium Degree in Conducting with Mark Stringer at the same University of Music.
He has composed almost 100 works of various types which have been performed by the Joseph-Haydn-Saal MDW Vienna, Alte Schmiede Vienna, Kursalon Vienna, Laxemburger Schloss Upper Austria, Alte Rathaus Vienna, Arnold Schönberg Center Vienna and even Musikverein Vienna.
Daniel Rueda Blanco
Special Prize of the „George Enescu” Philharmonic Orchestra
The Colombian conductor and pianist Daniel Rueda Blanco was appointed in 2019 the Chief Conductor of the Orchestra of the Musikverein St. Pölten. The 2018/19 Season saw Daniel make his debut conducting the Ensemble PHACE (Austria) and the Ortenau Orchester Offenburg (Germany). In 2018 he was awarded the prestigious scholarship of the Sobotka-Janeczek Foundation in Vienna, for excellent Conductors and Soloists.
Daniel has been the Chief Conductor of the Colombian National Conservatory Chamber Orchestra (2014-15) and of the Conservatory Contemporary Music Ensemble (2013), as well as Assistant Conductor of the Concentus21 Orchestra of Vienna (2018). He has worked with different orchestras in Colombia and Europe: the String Orchestra of the Strasbourg Conservatory (France), the Strasbourg University Orchestra, the Critical Orchestra of the MDW, the Solist Kammerorchester of Vienna, the ProArte Orchestra of Vienna, and the Collegium Musicum Orchestra of Bogotá.
Daniel received in 2016 his Bachelor with Honors in Conducting from the Colombian National Conservatory, where he studied with Libardo Saavedra and Tetsuo Kagehira (Conducting), and Raúl Mesa (Piano). Currently, Daniel is pursuing a Magister Art in Orchestral Conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, in the classes of Simeon Pironkoff (Conducting) and Thomas Kreuzberger (Piano).
