Competitions

The Gender & Diversity Award will be awarded for the second time in the academic year 2024/2025. With the award the HMTM is strengthening and promoting their students’ artistic and academic engagement with the topics of gender and diversity. The competition is intended to encourage students to deal explicitly with the topic in the context of artistic and academic qualification work. In addition, the continuous development of gender and diversity-related research is also to be promoted in the artistic examination of the topics of gender, diversity and inclusion.

Students from all fields of study offered at HMTM (Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, school music, ballet academy, theatre academy) can take part.

Submission of application documents by 30 April 2025 to diversity.award@hmtm.de

Call for applications

Information on the Gender Diversity Award and application form: https://syncandshare.lrz.de/getlink/fiAznqGDmr7K18qoKXWwgu/Gender-Diversity%20Award_Call

Together with the Harald-Genzmer-Stiftung (Harald Genzmer Foundation), the University of Music and Theatre Munich organised two different competitions (until 2024): the Harald Genzmer Composition Competition and the Harald Genzmer Interpretation Competition.

Information on the Harald Genzmer Stiftung (in German) at: http://www.genzmer-stiftung.de/

In October 2021, the 1st Hindemith International Viola Competition was held in Munich, organised by the Viola Stiftung Walter Witte (Walter Witte Viola Foundation) and the University of Music and Theatre Munich, with the kind support of the Hindemith Institute Frankfurt. The competition focuses on works of the 20th and 21st centuries in order to discover new music in the spirit of Hindemith without neglecting the roots of past eras.

The competition is aimed at violists worldwide who aspire to a solo career.

Details about the competition and how to apply can be found on the competition website: www.hindemithcompetition.org

The Walter Witte Viola Foundation was founded in 1994. With this competition, which takes place every three years, it aims to promote the musical development of young violists and to reward their achievements with cash prizes totalling € 11,000. The Hindemith International Viola Competition evolved from the Hindemith Competition of the Viola Stiftung Walter Witte.

Details about the competition and registration can be found at:
www.hindemithcompetition.org

Contact:
E-Mail: hindemith@hmtm.de

Jan Koetsier’s works have a special place in the repertoire of brass instruments. The composer and conductor, who led the conducting class at our university for many years, has made a significant contribution to establishing brass chamber music in musical life with his compositional work.

Against this background, the foundation established by Jan Koetsier in 1993 at the University of Music and Theatre Munich is committed to the international promotion of brass chamber music. The Jan Koetsier Competition for Brass Chamber Music, a joint event of the Jan Koetsier Stiftung (Jan Koetsier Foundation) and the University of Music and Theatre Munich, is an essential element in this. The competition takes place every two years and is open to different brass ensembles, thus enabling more ensembles from all over the world to participate in the renowned Koetsier Competition.

The next competition will take place on 15 and 16 November 2025.

Flyer

Registration ensemble

Registration members of the ensemble

Further details about the foundation and Jan Koetsier:
www.jan-koetsier.de

Contact:
Constanze Richter
Tel.: +49 89 289-27425
E-Mail: koetsier@hmtm.de

The International Competition for Zither is organised by the Deutscher Zitherbund e. V. (German Zither Association) in cooperation with the University of Music and Theatre Munich.

The 10th International Zither Competition took place from 22 to 24 March 2024. All information about the former call for entries can be found here (German only).

The Ernst Volkmann Prize is awarded to musicians between the ages of 19 and 35. At the same time, the competition is also aimed at young zither players. For children and young people up to the age of 18, prizes are awarded in four age groups.

Artistic director and initiator of the competition is Prof. Georg Glasl. The aim of the competition is to promote and further qualify young zither players from all over Europe through competition and concerts – an opportunity that is so far unique in the world in the subject of zither. In addition, the repertoire for this special instrument is constantly being developed through composition commissions.

The Kurt Maas Jazz Award was established in the academic year 2012/2013 at the Jazz Institute of the HMTM on the initiative of Camilo Dornier. The competition serves both to promote jazz students at HMTM and to honour the memory of jazz musician, educator and entrepreneur Kurt Maas, who died in 2011. It honours the lifetime achievements of this artist, in particular in connection with the establishment and management of the jazz department of the former Richard Strauss Conservatory, the nucleus of today’s Jazz Institute at HMTM.

The competition is organised internally every two years at the Jazz Institute of the HMTM.

Further information: https://jazz.hmtm.de/en/jazz-award-eng

The Young Academy for the Highly Gifted at our university offers a composition competition for children and young people, which has so far taken place in 2012, 2016 and 2019.

The competition has been announced again for the academic year 2022/2023: Young creatives aged 7 to 19 years, divided into two age groups, could participate.

The former text of the call for entries is available for download here (in German):
Announcement Composition Competition for Children and Young People 2023

It was very easy to take part: Young composers only had to submit the sheet music for a short piece (max. five minutes) by 10 May 2023. The instruments for which the piece is composed were completely open. After the submission, a jury consisting of Prof. Jan Müller-Wieland (chair), Henrik Ajax, Prof. Moritz Eggert, Prof. Dorothea Hofmann and Prof. Dr. Adina Mornell decided.

Prizes of 200 euros were won, as well as the performance of the prize-winning pieces and composition workshops for the prize-winners. The prizes were awarded on Saturday, 24 June 2023 in the Carl Orff Auditorium (Luisenstraße 37a). A composition workshop for the prize-winners took place on Saturday, 1 July 2023.

»music matters« is a new internal university competition. The focus is on artistic presentation reflecting current social issues such as diversity and the culture of remembrance.

In addition to the regular prize money (see competition conditions), the Konzertgesellschaft München e. V. is donating a special prize.

The artistic director of the competition is KS Prof. Christiane Iven.

Competition subjects 2025: Piano | String instruments | Brass instruments

Registration deadline for competition participation: 24 March 2025

Public auditions: 14 May 2025, from 10:00 AM, Kleiner Konzertsaal (Arcisstr. 12)

Prize concert: 7 July, 7:00 PM, Großer Konzertsaal (Arcisstr. 12)

Competition conditions (PDF, in German)

Competition repertoire 2025 (PDF, in German)

Registration form (PDF, in German)

Contact
Constanze Richter (Communications Department)
Email: veranstaltungen@hmtm.de

The Steinway Förderpreis Klassik serves to promote talented students of our university with piano as their main subject with a performance profile and is organised jointly by Steinway & Sons Munich and the University of Music and Theatre Munich. Each year, the focus is on a composer whose work the participants must take into account in their choice of programme.

The competition is announced and organised internally each year at the Institute for Instrumental Performance.

Website of our cooperation partner (in German):
https://eu.steinway.com/de/manufaktur/kuenstler-und-konzerte/foerderung/steinway-foerderpreis/

The international Wolf Durmashkin Composition Award is organised by the association »dieKunstBauStelle e.V.« from Landsberg, the Gustav Mahler Private University Klagenfurt and the University of Music and Theatre Munich (HMTM).

The competition is aimed at composers up to the age of 35 who deal with the Holocaust in a new work for accordion, viola and percussion. Prize money totalling up to 3,000 euros will be awarded. 

The international Wolf Durmashkin Composition Award took place for the second time in 2024 and was entitled »Music and the Holocaust«. The award-winning works were premiered on 9 November 2024 in Munich, in memory of the victims of the November pogroms in 1938.
The competition is named after the Jewish musician Wolf Durmashkin from Vilnius, who was killed by the Nazis in a concentration camp in Estonia in 1944.

The first call for the internal university competition XPLORE was in autumn 2023. The competition is aimed at HMTM students from all disciplines who are interested in developing their own unusual concert ideas and bringing them to the stage. The main sponsor of the competition is the UNITEL Music Foundation, with further support from the association »Gesellschaft Freunde der Hochschule für Musik und Theater München e.V.« (Society of Friends of the University of Music and Theatre Munich).

The aim of XPLORE is to encourage HMTM students to explore new performance practices, develop innovative concert ideas and realise them in a simultaneously protected and public setting. To this end, the participants go through all phases of project development – from concept development and application submission to the calculation and planning of the stage set-up through to realisation – and thus gain important experience for their professional practice. On the way from the idea to a possible realisation, the students are professionally supported by the XPLORE_Lab course, mentoring and various workshops.

You can find an image film about the competition here (Youtube).

You can find the call for applications for the academic year 2024/2025 (deadline: 24 November 2024) here: PDF German / PDF English

Information on the XPLORE competition and accompanying workshops (updated regularly): https://syncandshare.lrz.de/getlink/fiLBC1p85bMqa6YhGaZFi1/XPLORE_Infos

Contact:
Email: xplore@hmtm.de

Project team
Artistic Director: Prof. Dr. Sonja Stibi
Project management: Paulina Platzer
Mentoring, workshops and courses: Hanni Liang, Prof. Dr. Sonja Stibi