Martin Rajna

Martin Rajna has become one of the most outstanding young conductors emerging from Hungary in recent years. Since 2023 he has been principal conductor at the Hungarian State Opera, Budapest. At the age of 29, and already with an outstanding resumé, he was appointed early 2025 as the new Music Director of the Luxembourg Philharmonic, with a four-year contract beginning in September 2026. In the same year he was also named as co-artistic director of the Wagner Days, at Müpa Budapest. Between 2021 and 2025 Martin Rajna was chief conductor of the Győr Philharmonic Orchestra.

In the present 2025/26 season, Rajna is marking several significant European debuts such as taking the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra to Bozar, Brussels and leading the production of Bartók’s Bluebeards Castle and Poulenc’s La voix humaine at Maggio Musicale in Florence. At the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest he will lead a new production of Lohengrin and conduct Turandot, La Boheme and Aida. Martin Rajna also continues to conduct concerts with the Pannon Philharmonic and the Győr Philharmonic Orchestra.

In previous seasons, Rajna has conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra of Teatro La Fenice, the Sinfonia Varsovia, the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, the Nürnberg Symphony Orchestra, the Hof Symphony Orchestra, the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester, the Philharmonie Südwestfalen and the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra of Slovenia in Ljubljana. At the Hungarian State Opera which has engaged him since 2021 he has recently been on the podium for Der fliegende Holländer, Attila, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Macbeth, Die Fledermaus and Maria Stuarda.

In July 2025, he conducted in the Tyrol Festival in Erl (Austria) a new production of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Poulenc’s La Voix humaine, both directed by Claus Guth. Rajna’s previous awards include a scholarship in 2022 to participate in the Forum Dirgieren programme of the German Music Council, and he was also selected for the Conducting Fellowship of the Lucerne Festival Academy where his mentor was Thomas Adés. In 2018, he won Hungary’s Junior Prima Award and in 2023 he was the winner of the György Cziffra Festival Talent Prize.

Martin Rajna graduated from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where he studied with Ádám Medveczky and András Ligeti and furthered his training at the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar under conductors Nicolás Pasquet and Ekhart Wycik. In 2021 he was selected to participate in the mentoring programme of the Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation, where he worked with such masters as Péter Eötvös, György Kurtág, Fabián Panisello and Magnus Lindberg.