Educational Media Reviews Online

Five of the 24 chosen entrants in the Sir Georg Solti International Conductor’s Competition held in Frankfurt in 2008 are followed in this well plotted, highly musically literate (Western classical) program: Alondra de la Parra, from Mexico and New York, Germany’s Andreas Hotz, Shizuo Kuwahara, a retuning Japanese-American competitor, Scotland’s James Lowe, and the youngest conductor among all two dozen, Aziz Shokhakimov, whose home country is Uzbekistan. It’s no spoiler to say that all of them have successful professional conducting careers today.

Judges comment especially on ‘charisma’ being an important component in successful conducting and they looked for that in the 500 videos submitted by people from more than 70 countries. By focusing on only a few competitors, Schauder reveals their distinctive personalities and musicality. Alondra’s satisfaction with her New York ensemble, Andreas’s gratitude at being able in the Solti competition to conduct some of Germany’s best orchestral musicians, Shizuo’s passion for his art, James’s happiness with making new friends among fellow conductors (he plays a silent “name this tune” game with one, as they go through conducting motions and guess each other’s pieces), and young Aziz’s cocky attitude endear them all to viewers in different ways. Three of these ‘charismatic ones’ advance to the 2nd level of competition (against 6 others) and two of those are chosen for the 3rd round (against one other) where they not only rehearse, but also conduct a full dress public orchestral performance. One of the pleasures of conductor competitions is seeing/hearing the same music interpreted in different ways and this program allows plenty of chances to experience, for example, parts of Haydn’s 49th Symphony and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite played uniformly excellently but with different aspects emphasized. Superior music competition storytelling is on display here, with excellent editing and sound quality.