The music landscape of Salzburg, Austria's fourth largest city and the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, is more vibrant now than anytime of the year with the Salzburg Festival, which stretches until the end of this month.
Through the festival, the city internationally recognised for classical music now plays host to an array of opera, drama, classical concerts and music-related programmes -- one of which was the Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award, which wrapped up last week. A joint initiative between Nestlé and the Salzburg Festival, the Young Conductors Award was inaugurated in 2010 with the objective of discovering young talented conductors and to contribute to the development of their careers.
For the 2016 award, applications were open to young conductors, aged from 22 to 35, who sent in DVDs of a performance and a complete repertoire list with special focus on 20th century pieces and contemporary music.
Ciarán McAuley. Nestlé
This year, three finalists, Ciarán McAuley, 33, from Ireland, Alexander Prior, 23, from Great Britain, and Aziz Shokhakimov, 27, from Uzbekistan, were selected from 86 candidates across five continents. After the award concerts earlier this month where each conducted the Austrian chamber orchestra, the Camerata Salzburg, at the Mozarteum Foundation, Shokhakimov was selected as the winner of this year's award.
The Uzbek conductor said it was a fantastic opportunity for him to be able to make music with a renowned orchestra like the Camerata Salzburg. Considering music as his "religion", Shokhakimov said his professional motivation is to serve music as the purest energy of God.
"Music is my religion," said the 2016 Young Conductors Award winner in a statement. "What I hope to achieve in life is to bring peace and joy through music."
The Salzburg Festival -- one of the world's prominent festivals of music and drama -- was established in 1920 and is held in the summer. For 25 years, Nestlé has partnered with and sponsored the festival to enable further its development and help make it known outside Austria.
Realising the importance that youth can play in keeping the festival going, festival organisers created the Young Conductors competition as well as hosting several concerts for young musicians.
In the end they decided to start the Young Conductors Award as the next step of their youth initiative, said Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Nestlé's chairman of the board.
Alexander Prior. Nestlé
"Those [young conductors] who have been in this award before have made a fantastic career," said Brabeck-Letmathe. "It's a good example that with this award, we have really achieved not just the competition for the best quality but created a platform for those young conductors in an outstanding international arena. And this has direct impact on the lives of the future generations of great conductors."
Artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, Austrian pianist and a member of the jury Markus Hinterhäuser said the first round of judging, which required them to watch 86 DVDs sent from candidates, was indeed an exhausting task given the many judging factors to be considered.
"Conductors are not just to be heard, but to be seen," explained Hinterhäuser. "The audience 80% of the time sees the conductor's back. So he has to communicate with the orchestra and people watching his back. He must have a strong aura, which has to go to the orchestra, and a strong aura, which has to go to the audience."
At the award concert, Shokhakimov chose to conduct works by German composer and clarinettist Jörg Widmann along with Mozart and Beethoven, which helped land him the title.
Apart from a cash prize, Shokhakimov will have a chance to conduct the world-renowned Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Felsenreitschule theatre as part of the Salzburg Festival next year. His prize-winning concert this year also will be recorded and released on CD.
Hinterhäuser believes the Young Conductors Award is one of the festival's more fruitful and enriching initiatives. He says the judges' task is not just to find the most talented young musician at the festival but also to discover a rare gem for the music world as a whole.
"This [The Young Conductors Award] is an award, not a competition," he said. "It's a big difference. It's quite a process to select one conductor and give him this award. Young conductors usually don't have the opportunity to have a high-class orchestra in front of them.
"So as a jury, it's a great responsibility to see what kind of capacity they have and how well they can communicate with the orchestra."
The 2016 Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award Winner
Aziz Shokhakimov | Age: 27 | Nationality: Uzbek
Age 13: Made his debut conducting the National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan
Age 18: Appointed chief conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan
Age 21: Won second prize at Mahler Competition of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra
Age 26: Conducted a highly acclaimed new production of Eugene Onegin in Bologna and a revival of Carmen.
