Conductor Lee Seung-won, First Korean to Win the Malko Conducting Competition

Conductor Lee Seung-won became the first Korean to win the 2024 Malco International Conducting Competition, according to classical performance planning company Mok Production on the 22nd.

The Malco International Conducting Competition was established in 1965 to honor Nikolai Malco, the founding principal conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and is held every three years. This year's competition finals, featuring 24 conductors from 20 countries, took place in Copenhagen from the 15th to the 20th local time.

In the first round, Lee Seung-won attracted the judges' attention by performing Haydn's Symphony No. 49 "La passione" in its original version accompanied by harpsichord. In the final round, he conducted the first movement of Brahms' Symphony No. 2 and "Dance of the Cockerel" from the Danish composer Carl Nielsen's "Masquerade."

Lee Seung-won received the competition's first prize of 20,000 euros (approximately 29.5 million KRW). Additionally, as a prize, he secured opportunities to collaborate with 24 orchestras worldwide.

Conductor Lee Seung-won, winner of the 2024 Malco International Conducting Competition [Photo by Mok Production]

Fabio Luisi, principal conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, praised Lee Seung-won, saying, "Lee has an amazing way of interpreting music, and throughout the competition, his approach to handling the orchestra's sound was very special."

Lee Seung-won expressed his feelings, saying, "It does not feel real to have won the world's most prestigious conducting competition. I will do my best for deeper music."

Lee Seung-won was a violist in the Novus Quartet string quartet from 2009 to 2017 before switching to conducting in 2018. Until 2022, he served as a viola professor at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig in Germany and was the principal conductor of the Berlin Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Music Gymnasium Orchestra. From the 2022?2023 season, he was appointed assistant conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in the United States, and from the 2023?2024 season, he was promoted to Associate Conductor. Alongside music director Louis Langr?e, he has worked as an assistant conductor with Marin Alsop, Thomas Sønderg?rd, Matthias Pintscher, and others in over 50 performances, and he is scheduled to conduct the orchestra's regular concerts in the 2024?2025 season.

Lee Seung-won is scheduled to conduct the Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra at the Seoul Arts Center Symphony Festival on the 27th. The program includes Glinka's opera "Ruslan and Ludmila" overture, Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1, and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4.