You don’t have to look far in the music world to see a Malko laureate tearing it up. Rafael Payare’s tenure at the helm of the illustrious Montreal Symphony Orchestra is producing not just gripping concerts, but acclaimed recordings.
Tung-Chieh Chuang is doing great work as General Music Director of the Bochumer Symphoniker, which recently extended his contract. Ryan Bancroft is bedding in to his chief conductorships of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, regularly lighting up the Royal Albert Hall at the BBC Proms.
And in a rather neat double-win for Denmark, Dmitry Matvienko will soon take the reigns of the symphony orchestra in Aarhus, Denmark’s second city, having enjoyed a flourishing freelance career in the three years since his Malko victory in 2021. So, the last four Malko winners are doing very nicely indeed.
Who will join them? It’s tantalising to look down the list of 24 conductors from 20 different countries, and wonder which of those names will be on all our lips in just over a week. Which of them will be handed a major conducting career on 20 April, with assured bookings from orchestras from Vilnius to Vancouver, including the flagship symphony orchestras of Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm?
Whoever wins will have proved themselves on the most challenging of stages. At the very least, conducting orchestras requires an inordinate balance of head and heart - an airline pilot’s cool-headed calculation wedded to an orator’s capacity to inflame.
Our 24 young conductors will be under no illusions: the Danish National Symphony Orchestra knows next week’s music inside out, having played it under countless conductors for decades and rehearsed it for a week to refresh. Almost every one of its members has more experience in the profession than the conductors who will stand in front of them, hoping to convince the orchestra that their take on Beethoven’s Fourth or Mozart’s Haffner Symphony is worth its weight.
Normally, when conductors meet an orchestra for the first time, it’s in private. During Malko, a live audience and an array of 15 cameras will capture their every move.
Nerve-wracking? You bet. One thing’s for sure: whoever leaves Copenhagen with €20,000 and a few years’ worth of work, will have earned it.
Andrew Mellor
