Successful Swiss brass band conductors
Two Swiss players made it to the final of the 1st International Conductors' Competition Augsburg, which focused on symphonic wind music. However, fellow Hong Kong competitor Adrian Sit came out on top.
After several rounds of competition with the Symphonic Wind Orchestra of the Leopold Mozart Center of the University of Augsburg, the Concert Band of the Bavarian Brass Band Academy (3BA) and the Augsburg Philharmonic Orchestra, three conductors qualified for the final from a total of 48 participants: Adrian Sit from Hong Kong and Laurent Zufferey and Stefan Roth, both from Switzerland.
In the first part of the final evening, they had to demonstrate their skills again in front of the audience in Augsburg's Kongress am Park and the three-member jury (alongside Scheibling, Atso Almila, Helsinki, and Domonkos Héja, Augsburg), each conducting for around fifteen minutes. Percussion technique, interpretation, charisma and the ability to engage in dialog with the orchestra were the four central assessment criteria.
The 22-year-old Swiss Laurent Zufferey took third place with the one-movement work "Traveler" by David Maslanka, while Stefan Roth came second with James Barnes' "Fantasy Variations" on a theme by Paganini. The jury placed Adrian Sit at the top of the podium for his interpretation of "Entornos" by Amando Blanquer Ponsoda in the final. The award ceremony was embedded in a gala concert with the Bundeswehr Music Corps under the direction of chief conductor Christoph Scheibling.
