Prizewinners Announced at the 7th Mahler Conducting Competition

Hosted by the Bamberg Symphony, the Mahler Conducting Competition has been held every three years since its inception in 2003.

Italian conductor Giuseppe Mengoli has recently been named as the winner of the Mahler Conducting Competition for 2023.

Mengoli receives €30,000 worth of prize money and appeared in the prizewinners' concert — in which he conducted Mahler's Seventh Symphony, Haydn's Symphony No. 92, and Berg's Sieben frühe Lieder with baritone Thomas Hampson. He will also make a recording with the Bamberg Symphony in the 2023/24 season.

Mengoli has recently concluded a term as Assistant Conductor to Lorenzo Viotti at the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and National Opera and has also served as assistant to Oleg Caetani, John Axelrod, Daniel Barenboim, and Christoph König.

Also an accomplished violinist, Mengoli has served as the concertmaster of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra.

"He has a modest and humble personality which transports into his remarkable connection of kindness and inner power," said Jakub Hrůša, the president of the jury and the principal conductor of the Bamberg Symphony. "[Mengoli gave] a totally convincing performance throughout the rounds with a perfect combination of knowledge of the score and an extraordinarily natural feeling of music."

"He possesses a strong ability to inspire the musicians and the audience alike through his musical language which speaks directly to everyone's hearts," Hrůša added.

Second Place of €20,000 went to the Japanese-American conductor Taichi Fukumara, while the German conductor Georg Köhler took Third Place of €10,000. 2023 also saw the introduction of a new prize for the best interpretation of a contemporary work. The American conductor Kevin Fitzgerald received this prize, which consists of €7,500 donated by the Mahler Foundation.

Application numbers were higher than in previous years, with 350 conductors applying to participate. Of these, almost 20% were women, which shows a promising increase compared with previous editions of the competition.