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Donatella Flick Conducting Competition 2008: Conductors: Ariane Matiakh, Michael Francis and David Afkham, London Symphony Orchestra. Barbican Hall, London 2.10.2008 (JPr)


BBC2’s Maestro series in which a number of celebrities were coached to wave a baton in front of an orchestra has much to answer for; not least the proposition that someone who cannot read music can be almost as good a conductor as someone who can. The series did at least give an airing for classical music on mainstream TV that doesn’t happen elsewhere  of course – except  for the ‘Last Night of the Proms.’ And another positive knock-on effect was my impression of a much larger audience at the Barbican Hall for this year’s Donatella Flick competition than last time around in 2006. Perhaps this is attributable to  Maestro too?

The driving force for this biennial competition, founded in 1990 in association with the London Symphony Orchestra with HRH The Prince of Wales as Patron, is Donatella Flick. This divorcee philanthropist is the former wife of Gerhard Rudolf ‘Muck’ Flick, part of the wealthy German industrial dynasty whose empire embraced coal, steel and Daimler / Chrysler. She is the daughter of Prince George Missikoff of Ossetia and an Italian mother and grew up mainly in Italy and Switzerland. At 13, Donatella was already the Italian junior schools' gymnastics champion and she later became  a philosophy graduate from the University of Rome.

The competition has a first prize of £15,000 and is open to young conductors who are under 35 and come from the EU. As well as the money, the winner also becomes assistant conductor of the LSO for a year, working with Valery Gergiev, Daniel Harding and other leading conductors to gain invaluable experience. I myself employed the first ever winner, Andrew Constantine, for a Wagner opera some years ago but few winners have made their mark in this country - although the competition is believed to have enhanced their international reputations and given them opportunities abroad.

The 2006 contest was an interminable affair at which the interval for the panel to decide on their result dragged on and on. Fortunately some effort seems to have been made to address this, there was a short video about the competition and the finalists, and – in fact – the panel seemed to  come to a very quick decision this time. After an initial selection process,  the competition takes place over three days of rehearsals and performances when 20 conductors are reduced to 10 and then the last three. Selecting the winner  this year was the responsibility of a jury consisting of Martin Cotton (non-voting chair), Sir Richard Armstrong, Marco Bucarelli, Andrew Marriner, Tamás Vásáry and Maxim Vengerov.

All three finalists, Ariane Matiakh, Michael Francis and David Afkham, conducted Verdi’s La Forza del Destino Overture and one other piece selected by the ‘luck of the draw’ after the previous day’s semi-final.

I do wish that Donatella Flick’s schmoozing of her friends, other guests, and HRH The Duke of Kent, who was present to announce the winner, could be separated from the competition final as it results in the extension of an already long evening. The interval,which is actually unnecessary until the jury goes off and deliberates, extended to 30 minutes and there  was also a delayed start.  I ruminated on how if the rest of us are late to a concert we are not allowed in until the interval. Oh, to be Royalty and be allowed to keep others waiting!

Martin Cotton announced that the young Frenchwoman Ariane Matiakh would conduct ‘Verdi and Brahm’ - at least that's what it sounded like to those of us on one side of the hall - after which the audience near me muttered about ‘Brahm’ for some time. [Note. We were subsequently notified that Mr Cotton did say Brahms and that the apparent lapse was probably due to a microphone fault. Ed]

I was quite impressed by Ariane Matiakh's conducting of the Verdi Overture where she eschewed its often interminable ‘rum-ti-tum’ and gave it some smoothness and Gallic flair. She was later seen on the video not to speak much English and this would undoubtedly have counted against her with a British orchestra even if her talent had got her to the final. Mlle Matiakh had also drawn the 'short straw' of Brahms’s Variations on the St Anthony Chorale as her second piece. This consists of a theme in B-flat major, eight variations and a finale, first composed by Brahms in 1873 with the orchestral version, Op. 56a, considered to be ‘the first set of independent variations for orchestra in the history of music’. Yet it remains a composition, I sometimes think, that only a musicologist could love. Each variation has its independent character, is often light and lilting Romantic music and I think 28-year-old Ariane Matiakh did the best she could with it. In what seemed 4inch heels and with her long flowing hair she reminded me of Simone Young and I think her career will go from strength to strength. Classical music needs more female conductors.

Next was the British finalist, 32-year-old Michael Francis. His was full-blooded Verdi with every timpani roll, cymbal clash and all the blaring brass at triple forte. This is not how I like to hear Verdi however; even his music deserves some subtlety. Michael Francis is a double bass player with the LSO and even if he used a stick,  his conducting – and orchestral sound - felt like just a variation of Valery Gergiev, whom he probably idolizes and for whom he has already stood in  at the podium. He also had to conduct Ravel’s 1913 Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No.2 derived from Ravel’s ballet score. There are three episodes: a sunrise with dawn choruswhich ends in the lovers’ reuniting after an enforced separation,  a symbolic pantomime involving the wooing of Syrinx by Pan  and a declaration of undying love followed by general partying with some orgiastically rhythmic thrusting. Michael Francis’s account began too loud and had nowhere to go, then after dawn and before the eloquent flute solo for Pan,  a sense of stupor had set in, which passed as the tumescent excitement of the finale approached: with the over-rampant percussion thiswas all a little mind-numbing.

After the interval it was the turn of the 25-year-old German David Afkham, whose only previous claim to fame was that he was the winner this year of the ‘Bernard Haitink Fund for Young Talent’ and had assisted the Maestro with Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for a short while. His Verdi Force of Destiny Overture again eschewed a typical Verdian sound, the brass was Brucknerian and there was a Germanic feel to the music with thoughts of Wagner’s ‘Flying Dutchman’ Overture fleetingly crossing my mind.

As a Fellow of Hessen’s Richard Wagner Association and Youth Orchestra it seemed David Afkham’s luck to have ‘won’ the Wagner to conduct. I appreciate that he only had a short time to work with the orchestra and the LSO are not known for their Wagner - having performed very little of his music in recent years -  but I began to wonder as Siegfried’s Rhine Journey and Funeral Music unfolded whether the conductor had ever seen Götterdämmerung in the theatre or even heard a CD.  Surely the LSO and Mr Afkham could have done better than this? The solo horn and other players in the brass section were not on their best form and the conductor displayed a rather reticent and unrefined conducting style. Surprisingly, this  did not seem to connect with music with which he must be quite familiar given his recent background. It was all rather strained with tempi that were either held back or else pressed forward unidiomatically.

That David Afkham was subsequently announced as the winner means that the jury must have seen some talent in all the rehearsals and performances over the three days not overtly apparent in the finalists’ concert. Good luck to him for his future conducting career.

At the end of the evening Donatella Flick expressed with some feeling how music is ‘important for the soul and for well-being’. She also expressed her ‘happiness’ that almost all her friends were in the hall that evening ‘in these difficult times’ and how organising the competition also brings her happiness. I am in admiration of the passionate and apparently tireless help that Donatella Flick gives to young conductors - so thanks and good luck to her too!

Jim Pritchard


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