Conducting from the Piano

Requirements

The Conducting from the Piano Category is open to professional and student pianist-conductors up to age 34. Eligibility is based on age on the first day of the competition (9^th May 2023). You can check your age on that date here:

Age Calculator

The deadline for video submissions to the preliminary round is 31^st December 2022. After the video submissions have been adjudicated, a maximum of 12 competitors will be accepted into the First Round in Meiningen.

Repertoire

Preliminary Round (Video Submission):

• Time limit: 15 minutes
• Required work: the main movement from one of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas
• Additional pieces for piano solo may be chosen freely.

First Round:

• Time limit: 25 minutes
• The program for this round may be chosen freely from the repertoire for solo piano. Works from the previous round may not be repeated.

Second Round:

• Time limit: 40 minutes
• This round consists of a rehearsal of a piano concerto with the Meiningen Court Orchestra. The competitor may choose how many movements of the concerto are rehearsed. From this round onwards, the chief conductor and the orchestra itself each receive a jury vote. Please choose one of the following concertos to prepare:

• Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, op. 15
• Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major, op. 19
• Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, op. 37
• Wolfgang Amadeus von Mozart, Piano Concerto in D minor, KV 466
• Wolfgang Amadeus von Mozart, Piano Concerto in A major, KV 488
• Wolfgang Amadeus von Mozart, Piano Concerto in B flat major, KV 595
• Johann Sebastian Bach, Piano Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056

Final Round:

• In this round, competitors conduct and perform the complete piano concerto from the previous round with the Meiningen Court Orchestra.

Notes on choosing free repertoire:

The Jury will take into account the stylistic diversity and the artistic and technical demands of the repertoire chosen. Pieces that meet any of the following criteria will also be looked on favorably:

• Pieces by composers, the interpretation of whose works by Hans von Bülow set a benchmark in terms of fidelity to composer intentions: Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky
• Pieces (or transcriptions and arrangements for piano) by composers with connections to Meiningen: Hans von Bülow, Johannes Brahms, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Günter Raphael.
• New music composed after 1970 (works for prepared piano are not allowed).

Time limits refer to the total duration of the music played, not including the breaks between pieces or movements. Repeats may be played within the time limits given. In the Preliminary and First Rounds it is acceptable to play a single movement or selection of movements from a longer work.

The program for the video round must be played from memory and recorded with no cuts or editing. The competitor must be completely visible, including their feet. The camera should not be placed more than five meters away from the competitor.

Use of the orchestral score when conducting from the piano is permitted.

Jury

Competition judges for the Preliminary Video Round in the Conducting from the Piano Category in January 2023

To maintain transparency, the video submissions in the Preliminary Round will be adjudicated by a separate jury. The chair of the jury is Prof. Christian Wilm Müller. The jury for the Preliminary Round will meet in Meiningen in January 2023 to make their adjudications.

The competitors selected for the First Round in May in Meiningen will be notified by 31^st January 2023.

Competition judges in the Conducting from the Piano Category in May 2023 in Meiningen

The guidelines for the work of our jury (pdf file) can be found here.

The decisions of the jury are final and cannot be contested.