Oksana Lyniv
Conductor

Internationally engaged conductor, founder and artistic director of LvivMozArt Festival, Lviv (Ukraine), founder, conductor and art director of the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine/YsOU. The first female chief conductor of an Italian opera orchestra – since 2022 the General Music Director of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. The first female conductor in the history of the Bayreuth Opera Festival, with her debut production of “Flying Dutchman” as the opening of the festival 2021. In November 2020, Oksana Lyniv received the Opera!Awards as the best female conductor of 2020. 2017-2020 – principal conductor of the Graz Opera and the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra (Austria). Since the beginning of the escalation of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Lyniv has become a symbol of a fighter in the international music world against the war that broke out in her country.

Celebrated for the extraordinary combination of precision and temperament of her conducting and the fascinating depth of her musical understanding, Oksana Lyniv stays in the focus of international attention and is one of the most prominent conductors of the younger generation. Since the beginning of the 2017/18 season, Oksana Lyniv had been chief conductor of the Graz Opera and the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra. With her inexhaustible creativity and unique artistic flair, she brought a new breath to the musical life of one of the most important Austrian cultural cities.

International concert activity flourishes in her hands: as a guest conductor, she works with numerous leading orchestras worldwide and the renowned opera houses in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, France, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, Japan and Ukraine , such as the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Staatskapelle Berlin, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, RSO-Wien, Münchner Philharmoniker, Orchestra Philharmonie Luxembourg, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Graz Philharmonic Orchestra, Toulon Opera orchestra, the Munich Symphony Orchestra, the Freiburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hessian State Orchestra, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra; As an opera conductor, she has performed at the Bavarian State Opera, Berlin State Opera, Opera Frankfurt, the Gran Teatre del Liceu Bercelone, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the Theater an der Wien, the Stuttgart State Opera, the Estonian National Opera, the Bonn State Opera, the Osnabrück Theater, the Bremen Theater, the Royal Swedish Opera, the Lviv National Opera and Odessa National Opera.

The most important debuts in Oksana Lyniv’s season 2019/20 were: with the Berliner Staatskapelle and with the Munich Philharmonic, with the Barenboim-Said Academy Staatskapelle Berlin in the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, at the Berlin State Opera with operas “Medea” by L. Cherubini and “Die Magic Flute “by W.A.Mozart, also new production of “Aida” by G. Verdi in the historical complex The Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor (Egypt); New productions of the operas “Don Carlos” by G. Verdi, “The Passenger” by M. Weinberg (regardfully, the premiere were postponed due to COVID-19) and S. Prokofiev’s ballet “Cinderella” at the Graz Opera (Austria); and internationally celebrated return to the Bavarian State Opera with musical direction of the new production „Judith” with Bartok’s Concert for the orchestra and his opera “Bluebeard’s Castle”.

In the next season 2021/22, Oksana Lyniv is expected to make her debut at the Royal Opera House and the Opera Royal de Wallonie-Liege, lead the new production and give her Italian opera debut at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, as well as lead a concert with the Karajan Academy of the Berliner Philharmonic and conduct the new production at the Stuttgart Opera, as well as comeback with revival of “Flying Dutchman”at the Bayreuther Opera Festival.

Her international career took off in 2004 when Oksana Lyniv won the Third prize at the Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in Germany. From 2008 to 2013 she worked at the Odesa National Opera. From 2013 to 2017 she worked as musical assistant to the GMD Kirill Petrenko and as a conductor at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. With great success she has conducted the revivals of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” or R.Strauss’ “Ariadne von Naxos”, as well as new productions, including Britten “Albert Herring” and Boris Blacher “Die Flut”; For the new productions of the chamber opera by Paul Ruders “Selma Jezkova” and Rossini’s opera “Le Comte Ory” she was awarded the Bavarian State Opera Festival Prize and the title “Star of the Year 2015” in the category “Classic”.

Parallel to her international career, Oksana Lyniv is passionately committed to the development of classical music in Ukraine, thus playing an important role as one of the most important figures in the cultural landscape and is considered the cultural ambassador of Ukraine to the world. For this she was awarded several titles, such as the honorary ambassador of the city of Lviv, as well as with numerous Ukrainian awards: the medal “For Intellectual Courage” from the magazine “Ji”, “People of Lviv” (2017), “People of modern times” (2017), “BOOM Awards 2018”; For her international projects she was rated “100 Most Influential Women of Ukraine” by the magazine “Focus” and “Top 100” by the magazine “NV” (2019).

She is also a laureate of the renowned TREBBIA International Award in the nomination “For Art Activity” (Czech Republic, 2019), received the status “Star of the Year 2015” in the nomination “Classics” and a prize from the Munich Opera Festival, two years in a row she was nominated in the category “Art” by the magazine Die Steierin (2018-2019, Graz, Austria).

In 2016 she initiated the founding of the LvivMozArt International Classical Music Festival in Lviv, Ukraine, and has been leading it successfully ever since. Also in 2016, on the initiative of Oksana Lyniv was founded the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine / YsOU – the first and only youth orchestra in Ukraine that unites talented young people from all over the country. The orchestra has developed into a powerful platform to support young musicians from all regions of Ukraine and has performed brilliantly in Bonn (Beehovenfest Bonn), Berlin (Young Euro Classic) and Bayreuth (Bayreuth Youth Artist Festival), Graz (Musikverein Graz), Lviv (LvivMozArt Festival) and Kyiv, thus having already gained international recognition.

“All of this happens with a dancer’s body tension. You think you can literally see the energy floating between her and the musicians…. ”

(Die ZEIT, the 20th of September, 2018)

In the end, Oksana Lyniv was the loudly acclaimed conductor. In this one evening she had brought all, really all, facets of Bártók over the ramp! Clear, meticulous are her gestures. Sense for slim dramaturgy, for an extraordinary tonal range from soft to hard, from gentle to razor-sharp. The Bavarian State Orchestra read all the wishes from her eyes of the great expert at the conductor’s desk. The sound pattern: from delicate to extremely compact. Still not for a moment overdriven or even noisy! Trumpet and trombone choir, the flute’s and bassoon’s solos: others won’t be able to imitate that soon!

(Onlinemerker, February 2020)

«One of the God’s greatest gifts to people is the gift of choice. And it is this question of choice that is relevant to me every day. Every evening I ask myself what I lived today for? The most important thing for me is to be a co-creator of my life, the life of our (and my) country and so that of our entire civilization.»

O. Lyniv

Mao Fujita
Piano

With an innate musical sensitivity and naturalness to his artistry, 21-year old pianist Mao Fujita has already impressed many leading musicians as one of those special talents which come along only rarely, equally at home in Mozart as the major romantic repertoire.
Born in Tokyo, Fujita was still studying at the Tokyo College of Music in 2017 when he took First Prize at the prestigious Concours International de Piano Clara Haskil in Switzerland, along with the Audience Award, Prix Modern Times, and the Prix Coup de Coeur, which first brought him to the attention of the international music community. He was also the Silver Medalist at the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow where his special musical qualities received exceptional attention from the jury of leading musicians as well as Valery Gergiev who has invited him on a number of international tours since.

Fujita has been invited to appear in recital at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, at Verbier Festival as Academy Musician, and in the New Generation series at the Louis Vuitton Foundation. Orchestral highlights include his London debut with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra in 2019, and performances with top Japanese orchestras such as the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. In Tokyo in 2019, he jumped in a two days’ notice to perform the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.2 with the Mariinsky Orchestra and Valery Gergiev to rapturous acclaim.

Fujita’s breathtaking performance at the Tchaikovsky Competition in particular has earned invitations at the very highest level worldwide, and the 2020/21 season will see him make his debuts with the Munich Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestras under the baton of some of the world’s most prestigious conductors such as Gergiev, Petrenko and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. In recital, Fujita appears at London’s Wigmore Hall, Schloss Elmau and next summer’s Verbier Festival where he will perform a complete cycle of the Mozart piano sonatas. He will also make his debut at the Tsinandali and Riga-Jurmala Festivals in 2021.

Starting piano lessons at the age of three, Fujita won his first international prize in 2010 at the World Classic in Taiwan, and became a laureate of numerous national and international competitions such as the Rosario Marciano International Piano Competition in Vienna (2013), Zhuhai International Mozart Competition for Young Musicians (2015), and the Gina Bachauer International Young Artists Piano Competition (2016).

PAN-CAUCASIAN YOUTH ORCHESTRA