Conducting: harder than it looks

The Donatella Flick Conducting Competition. You couldn't make it up: if anybody in the world was born to create a conducting competition, it was Donatella Flick, a name that drips with Euro-glamour and suggests the physical movements - the flicks, sweeps, and waves - that the prize rewards for the best podium show-pony.

Donatella – yes, she really exists – set up the biennial competition in 1990, in order to give young conductors a chance to shine, and a meaningful career break. This is much more than an upmarket maestro: the first prize is a cheque for £15,000, and even more importantly, the chance to work with the London Symphony Orchestra as their assistant conductor for a year. Last Thursday night was the final of 2008's event at the Barbican in London, with the LSO the willing guinea-pigs for the three young maestri, whittled down from a field of 20 at the beginning of the week, and a field of 85 before that. I've never been before, and apart from the mindless royalist genuflection (HRH the Duke of Kent was in attendance - do we really need to stand up for the national anthem just because some heir or other happens to make it down to a concert hall?) the final was a fascinating demonstration of the difference a good – and a bad – conductor can make on even greatest of our orchestras.

The lucky triumvirate (26 year-old French Ariane Matiakh, and two men, Brit Michael Francis, 32, and 23 year-old German David Afkham) all played Verdi's Forza del Destino Overture (the Stella Artois advert, among other things) and a choice of Brahms's Haydn Variations, Ravel's Second Suite from Daphnis and Chloé, and Siegfried's Rhein Journey and Funeral Music from Götterdämmerung. Ariane went first, and produced a leaden, uninvolving account of the Verdi, and a performance of the Brahms that made both the music and the orchestra sound dull and lumpen. The problem was her gestures: she obviously knew the music well enough, but couldn't communicate any spark of vitality to the players, and seemed content just to get through the piece. This was Brahms as the "leviathan maunderer" of George Bernard Shaw's description. Not good.

At the other end of the spectrum, there was a crackle of electricity from the very first bar of Michael Francis's Verdi. Perhaps it's no surprise he inspired the LSO: he has been a member of the orchestra's double-bass section, has worked as Valery Gergiev's assistant, and already given concerts with them. You could see the stamp of his mentor in his body language, with his tremulous left hand and animal energy in the loud, exciting moments. Yet his Ravel was ill-disciplined. It's one thing to be excited all the time by the music and the performance, but if you make the first climax as noisy as the last, you can't control the bigger structure of the music. The LSO gave a dazzling performance, and relished the way Francis let them off the leash, even if the result was musically limited. Still, if the performance didn't cohere, he communicated more genuine passion in one bar than Matiakh did in her whole performance.

So it was left to the German candidate to produce the best performance of the evening – and to walk away with the prizes, the cheque and the job. David Afkham combined control with insight in his Verdi. If individual moments weren't as exciting as in Francis's performance, the overall experience was much more satisfying. Judged by the highest standards, he and the LSO did not play the Wagner well. It's unfamiliar territory for the players, and Afkham failed to find the mystery or the grandeur of Wagner's most visionary music. But he's got a lifetime to do that: what he did do was show that he can command a large ensemble with authority and occasional inspiration. 2006's winner, Michal Dworzynski, had his breakthrough when he stood in with the LSO for Daniel Harding ("potentially a force to be reckoned with", Tim Ashley said in his review last October). I'd be surprised if Afkham didn't also take his chance sometime next season.