The initial reactions were admittedly sceptical when a veritable recorder afficionado contacted us from Boston, USA to announce his desire to stage a competition for recorder students at the mdw in memory of his Israeli father Hans Lewitus, who had been active in Peru—initially as a clarinettist and eventually also as a player of the recorder, for which he went on to arrange and compose numerous works. But it is thanks to the persistence, infectious enthusiasm, and empathy of Ricardo Lewitus that any initial misgivings were banished following his visit to Vienna, at the latest, whereupon planning went forward for the first edition of an initially internal two-round competition open to all mdw students with the recorder as their main artistic subject.
This effort came to involve not only the mdw’s Department of Early Music but also Vice Rectorate for Academic Affairs, Exilarte, and mdw Rector Ulrike Sych, who made realising this competition a personal priority. The video-based preliminary round produced six finalists who presented themselves to a six-person jury in the Fanny Hensel Hall on 22 November in the presence of donor Ricardo Lewitus and his wife Maria. The expert jury was comprised of the following individuals: Ulrike Sych (mdw Rector, chair), Eugène Michelangeli (head of the mdw’s Department of Early Music), Anton Sorokow (concertmaster of the Wiener Symphoniker and mdw violin professor), Anne-Suse Enßle (recorder professor, State Conservatory of Tyrol), Katharina Lugmayr (recorder professor, mdw), and Carsten Eckert (recorder professor, mdw). Each of the judged performances began with a work by Hans Lewitus and continued with the jury-selected works from the candidates’ submitted repertoire lists. Four winners were then announced: 1st Prize: Britta Kähny; 2nd Prize: Barbora Špelinová; and two 3rd Prizes: Gellért Jassó, Chia-Yu Lin.
All winners of the 1st Hans Lewitus Advancement Award presented their impressive abilities in a final concert on 24 November 2025 that left audience members enthusing about just what great variety such a seemingly simple instrument can manifest. The pilot project thus concluded is to be followed in the years to come by an initially national and ultimately international event. This competition is one of Europe’s few opportunities for young recorder students to share a stage on which they can compare themselves directly and have their prowess judged by an expert jury.
