The German conductor Christian Blex has won the 2025 Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award at the Salzburg Festival, one of the most prestigious recognitions for emerging talents on the podium. The announcement followed the final concert of the Award Concert Weekend on 3 August at the Mozarteum’s Great Hall, where Blex conducted the Camerata Salzburg in a demanding programme featuring Zimmermann, Mozart and Beethoven.
Chosen from over 300 applicants representing 55 countries, Blex impressed an international jury chaired by Manfred Honeck. As part of the award, he will return to the Salzburg Festival in 2026 to conduct the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Blex is currently assistant conductor of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and a former conducting fellow of the Karajan Akademie in Berlin. He has worked alongside Kirill Petrenko, Gustavo Dudamel, Daniel Barenboim and others, and with leading orchestras such as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Bamberg Symphony.
His academic background is equally remarkable: he holds degrees from the University of Warwick and the University of Cambridge, and is currently pursuing doctoral studies at Oxford while training with Ole Kristian Ruud at the Norwegian Academy of Music. A former scholarship-holder of the German Conductors’ Forum, Blex is also a member of the Nordic Conductors’ Forum.
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