Rajna Martin

conductor

Martin Rajna is one of the most outstanding young conductors emerging from Hungary, working with soloists of international fame. In 2021 he was appointed chief conductor of the Győr Philharmonic Orchestra, and despite his young age, he regularly appears as guest conductor at the Hungarian State Opera, Budapest and with leading symphony orchestras of Hungary, including the National Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2018, he was selected for Hungary’s Junior Prima Award. In 2022 he won a scholarship for the Forum Dirgieren programme of the German Music Council and a Conducting Fellowship at the Lucerne Festival Academy.

In 2022/23 he will continue his collaboration with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and will also conduct the MÁV Symphony Orchestra, the Budafok Dohnányi Orchestra and the Szent István Philharmonic Orchestra of Zugló. He will return to the Győr National Theatre with Verdi’s Rigoletto and Ferenc Lehár’s The Merry Widow. In the summer of 2022 he will appear at the Festival Academy Budapest conducting Stravinsky’s L'Histoire du soldat, featuring, among others, Barnabás Kelemen, Andreas Ottensamer and Sergei Nakariakov.

As chief conductor of the Győr Philharmonic Orchestra, he conducted a series of critically acclaimed concerts and opera performances in the 2021/22 season, including a concert performance of Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard's Castle. He also led his orchestra at the Richard Strauss marathon, organized by the Budapest Festival Orchestra.

His opera debut was at the National Theatre of Győr in 2020, conducting Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which he also conducted at the Budapest State Opera in 2022, together with Görgy Ránki’s King Pomádé's New Clothes, an opera for children. His next appearance in the Hungarian State Opera will be in December 2022 with Die Fledermaus by J. Strauss.

Martin Rajna graduated from the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where he studied with Ádám Medveczky and András Ligeti. Currently he is training at the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar under professors Nicolás Pasquet and Ekhart Wycik. In 2021 he was also selected for the mentoring programme of the Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation, where he worked with masters such as Péter Eötvös, György Kurtág, Fabián Panisello or Magnus Lindberg. He also took part in conducting courses by Péter Eötvös, Zsolt Hamar and György Vashegyi.