France’s La Maestra Competition Announces 2024 Winners

Conductor Bar Avni from Israel has won first prize with a cash award of €20,000

Created in 2019 by the Philharmonie de Paris and the Paris Mozart Orchestra, the La Maestra Competition is an international competition exclusively for women conductors. 

For this year’s edition, three finalists competed for top prizes and performance opportunities at the Philharmonie de Paris on March 17. 

Israeli conductor Bar Avni, 34, won first place with €20,000. Avni also received the competition’s French Concert halls and Orchestras Prize, the ARTE Prize, the €2,500 Paris Mozart Orchestra Prize, and the ECHO Prize, which was awarded by representatives of the European Concert Hall Organization (ECHO). 

Second prize of €10,000 went to the 30-year-old conductor Liubov Nosova from Russia; the €5,000 third prize was awarded to Katharina Morin, 29, from Germany, who also received the event’s €2,000 Generation Opera Prize.

Additionally, one of the competition’s seven semifinalists, the 19-year-old Ukrainian conductor Olha Dondyk received a special mention from the committee of the ECHO Prize. 

La Maestra’s 2024 winners and semifinalists will also take precedence in participating in the La Maestra Academy, which will run from March 2024 for two years until 2026. 

Chaired by Nathalie Stutzmann, the 2024 jury comprised Elise Båtnes, Claire Gibault, Kirill Karabits, Vimbayi Kaziboni, Kathryn McDowell, and Leonard Slatkin.

“Being named the winner of La Maestra is such a great honor, a dream come true,” Avni expressed at the award ceremony. “There is also another priceless gift — La Maestra is supposed to be a competition, and it was — but I also sensed a great feeling of community and solidarity.” 

“It has been a great privilege to spend this week with all of you [fellow finalists], these amazing conductors from all around the world,” Avni added. “To be together, to grow together, to eat together, to inspire each other with our varying backgrounds and nationalities and despite all the incredibly sad things that are going on in our [crazy] world right now. For me, people are the most important inspiration and the music that we make together grows out of this inspiration, and you all have been truly inspiring for me.”

The 2024 La Maestra Competition Final and award ceremony can be viewed below: