Breaking: Young Brit, 23, wins major conducting competition

Breaking: Young Brit, 23, wins major conducting competition

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norman lebrecht

September 16, 2017

After a week of high performance, and hotly tipped after the semi-final, Ben Glassberg has just been named winner of the Besancon Conducting Competition.

You read it here first.

The jury was chaired by Leonard Slatkin.

The previous winner, Jonathon Heyward, is now assistant conductor at the Halle Orchestra in Manchester and a Dudamel Fellow in Los Angeles.

UPDATE: Ben also won the audience prize and the orchestra award, a clean sweep.

Comments

  • SopranoAM says:

    Jonathon Heyward is from the USA, not GB and was recently named a Dudamel fellow at the LA Phil

  • Joseph Turner says:

    Seriously, who decides the winners of these competitions? I’ve played for him and very few of the orchestra rated him. Very strange.

  • Cyril Blair says:

    Why “quietly tipped” and “hotly tipped”? Is this a way of saying Leonard Slatkin told you after the semifinal that this gentleman was going to win? I don’t understand how this could be appropriate.

  • From the semifinals on he was clearly the best and largely deserved to win!!

  • G J Cooper says:

    I was at Glyndebourne on 19th August for “La clemenza di Tito”. The reviews of the production that I had read were not enthusiastic and then to discover that Robin Tcciati was ill and the performance would be conducted by Ben Glassberg did not help my mood – though it was a lovely Glyndebourne day. In the event the performance was a triumph. If Ben produced performances of this quality in the competition, he surely deserved to win.

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