CONCOURS DE GENÈVE
Blazing a new trail: the Concours de Geneve returns to conducting for the first time since 1994, with an innovative new format
BY CHARLOTTE GARDNER JOURNALIST, CRITIC & WRITER
With its annually rotating instrumental disciplines and long list of starry laureates, the Concours de Genève never mounts an edition that doesn’t feel fresh and special in its own way. That said, the forthcoming Conducting Competition promises to be doubly exciting.
Since the Concours de Genève’s foundation in 1939, there have only ever been three Conducting competitions, and the last one in 1994 was won by none other than Alan Gilbert, the famously innovative, Grammy Awardwinning American conductor currently at the helm of Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and Royal Swedish Opera. Look online and you can still watch his 1994 Prizewinner’s concert performance, leading the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (OSR) and 1990 Piano Competition winner Nelson Goerner in a supremely assured Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto – met by the Victoria Hall audience with roof-lifting applause.
‘I was there myself on the night of the 1994 final, and remember it with absolute clarity’ says current Competition General Secretary, Didier Schnorhk. ‘I was a musician myself at the time, and was very impressed. It was something very different. So when I then took charge of the Competition in 1999, I thought, “I want to do the same”’.
What with the additional financial and logistical pressures inherent in staging a highest-level conducting competition, that ambition ended up having to wait. Now that it’s here though, inspired in part by the Concours de Genève’s approaching 80th anniversary, Schnorhk is not so much doing ‘the same’, as spreading wings the competition’s wings with an innovative and ambitious new format. Most immediately striking is that it is held over two years – a conscious emulation of the recently-established Rotterdam
‘This will be a real opportunity for audiences to be able to understand the deep work that a conductor needs to do with an orchestra with regard to phrasing, colours and balance’
CÉDRIC PESCIA
International Conducting Competition, designed to provide participants with the time and opportunity to truly develop and showcase their artistic vision and leadership skills across what is a tremendously multifaceted repertoire list encompassing three centuries of music – from Beethoven and Schubert to Wagner, Ligeti and Chin – while conducting no fewer than four different, prestigious ensembles: the Orchestre de la Haute école de musique de Genève, the Orchestre de Chambre de Genève, new music specialists Ensemble Contrechamps, and of course the OSR, the competition’s time-honoured partner.
One further entirely unique element is this Conducting Competition’s integration with the Composition Competition by way of a joint final in which, beyond their chosen works, each of the three Conducting candidates presents one of the three Composition candidates’ newly created pieces, prepared in collaboration with each other – climaxing in a joint evaluation celebrating the intersection of interpretation and creation (with the Conducting jury comprised not just of conductors, but of specialists across different relevant fields).
Equally important across this Conducting Competition, though, is what happens offstage. Behind the scenes for instance, following the first two rounds in 2025, the six selected semi-finalists will take part in a series of activities – masterclasses, preparatory workshops, meetings with orchestras – designed to further their skills, and to prepare them both for the next stages of the competition, while on the personal level fostering camaraderie and friendships between them. ‘This opportunity to watch them develop between 2025 and 2026 will be really important for both the jury and for the audience’ enthuses pianist Cédric Pescia, President of the Competition’s Artistic Committee, ‘because in one year, everything can happen’.
Then, when so much of a conductor’s work with an orchestra happens in rehearsals, these too will not only also be judged, but will be open to the public, with the conductors fitted with microphones so that not a word they say to the musicians is lost. ‘This will be a real opportunity for audiences to be able to understand the deep work that a conductor needs to do with an orchestra with regard to phrasing, colours and balance’ outlines Pescia. ‘They can also watch exactly how each conductor is working with an orchestra: how they’re managing time, what they’re focussing on, how they’re explaining or indeed not explaining – given that for some conductors it will be a lot of non-verbal communication’. There will also be the interest of watching how the young conductors deal with ensembles ranging from less experienced students through to artists used to working with the world’s greatest conductors.
Speaking of which, asked what the OSR musicians themselves might be hoping for from the participants, the orchestra’s General Manager Steve Roger cites both the need for someone with whom they feel safe enough onstage to be able to express and to give their all, and also for individuality. ‘The musicians will be looking for something personal’ he emphasises. ‘If a conductor is just a copy of another conductor, that’s not interesting for them’.
Essentially, this will be a Concours de Genève like no other in its triple remit to maximise its participants’ development time, shine a behind-the-scenes light for the public on its participants’ art, and ultimately find an exciting new, multi-faceted conducting voice. ‘To have that kind of natural authority, and ability to convince fellow artists to follow you, is not easy, and I hope this will interest our public,’ concludes Schnorhk. ‘Then in November 2026, I hope we will have a wonderful final concert with great music, great conductors, and yes, a First Prize winner who can have a career of the stature of Alan Gilbert.’