Christian Blex

The German conductor Christian Blex is the winner of the 2025 Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award at the Salzburg Festival. His career took a decisive turn when he participated in the Karajan-Akademie as the winner of the Siemens Conducting Scholarship and worked with the Berlin Philharmonic as assistant to Kirill Petrenko. During this period, he stepped in at short notice for Daniel Harding at Schloss Esterházy and performed at the Berlin Philharmonie. As well as Kirill Petrenko, he has worked with conductors including Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel, Daniele Gatti, Alan Gilbert, Jakub Hrůša, Hannu Lintu, Ingo Metzmacher, Kent Nagano, Sakari Oramo, Tugan Sokhiev and Christian Thielemann — both in Berlin and with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, of which he was the assistant conductor.

During the 2025/26 season he conducted orchestras including the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, the symphony orchestras of Malmö, Aarhus and Odense, the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano and Trento and the Brussels Philharmonic at Flagey and Bozar. In addition, he returned to the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, performed with the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra at the Berlin Philharmonie, and conducted Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Istanbul State Opera and the Hermann Levi Akademie’s festival concert at the Cuvilliés-Theater in Munich. With the Bamberg Symphony he recorded a CD for BR, featuring works by Elgar, Schubert and Tchaikovsky.

He has also conducted orchestras including the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tyrolean Symphony Orchestra Innsbruck, the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, the Bergische Symphoniker and the Jena Philharmonie.

Christian Blex studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music with Ole Kristian Ruud, and as an exchange student both at the Zurich Academy of the Arts with Johannes Schlaefli and at the University of Music Franz Liszt in Weimar with Nicolás Pasquet. He was a scholarship holder of the German Forum Dirigieren (Conductors’ Forum) and a participant in the Norwegian Dirigentløftet. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Warwick and a Master’s degree in Economics from Cambridge University. He is currently completing a doctorate as an Alan Turing Scholar at the University of Oxford.