Competition successes for HfMT conducting class
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Despite the corona crisis and the associated restrictions on concert activities, Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr can be pleased about several competition successes by students from his conducting class:
Nicolas Kierdorf became a semi-finalist at the international Donatella Flick Conducting Competition in London out of over 300 applicants.
David Bui and Sukjong Kim both made it to the semi-finals of the Bucharest International Conducting Competition, with David Bui winning 2nd prize at the competition. He also won 1st prize at the international Ionel Perlea Competition in July.
Vitae
David Bui, 1st prize winner of the Ionel Perlea International Conducting Competition, completed his Bachelor's degree at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin in 2017 and made his debut with the Konzerthaus Orchester Berlin at the same time. Since then, he has continued his education at the same university with Prof. Christian Ehwald and Prof. Hans-Dieter Baum in the Master's program. The ERASMUS exchange program took him to the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo in the autumn semester of 2019, where he studied with Prof. Ole Kristian Ruud and Prof. Sigmund Thorp.
Since October 2020, he has been studying for his concert exam with Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr at the University of Music and Drama in Hamburg. During his studies, he stood at the podiums of the Brandenburger Symphoniker, the Karlovarský Symfonický Orchestrund the Filharmonia Zielonogórska as a representative of Germany at the Musikfesttage "an der Oder". At the beginning of 2019, he made his debut with the Hamburg Camerata in the world-famous Elbphilharmonie concert hall. Further masterclasses have taken him to Maestro Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Prof. Johannes Schlaefli, Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr and Prof. Nicolás Pasquet.
Nicolas Kierdorf was born in Cologne in 1994. He received his first trumpet lessons at the age of 7, followed by piano lessons at the age of 13, which sparked his interest in conducting. He received his first conducting lessons at the age of 15. He won several prizes in the "Jugend musiziert" competition at state and national level in the solo and chamber music categories. Immediately after graduating from high school, he began his conducting studies at the HfMT Cologne with Michael Luig, Stephan E. Wehr and Alexander Rumpf and continued his studies at the HfMT Hamburg with Ulrich Windfuhr and David de Villiers. He is currently studying for his concert exam in Hamburg.
He is interested in symphonic music as well as opera and has conducted Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel", Handel's "Alcina", Nicolai's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" at the opera schools in Cologne and Hamburg. He also works closely with the specialist ensemble for historical performance practice, "Concert Royal Köln", of which he was musical director for the 2018 production of "Il matrimonio segreto". In 2022, he will make his debut with "Concert Royal Köln" at the Handel Festival in Halle. In 2019, he was a semi-finalist for the prestigious German Conducting Award.
Sukjong Kim was born in 1992 in the city of Wonju in South Korea, and has been studying for her B.A. at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama in Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr's conducting class since 2019.
In August 2021, Sukjong was invited to the International Conducting Competition in Bucharest (JM International Conducting Competition 2021) and reached the semi-finals. In addition, she was invited to the Conducting Forum 2020 and 2021 in Germany in the last two years, where she made it to the finalist list. Furthermore, Sukjong was invited to the Jeunesse Musicales Conducting Masterclass of Christian Ehwald and Sigmund Thorp with the Royal Camerata Orchestra in Bucharest in August 2021.