Felix Mildenberger

German conductor Felix Mildenberger has won first prize in the 2018 Donatella Flick Conducting Competition (known colloquially as 'The Flick'), which took place at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and at the Barbican Centre in London, UK, 20-22 November 2018.

Mildenberger receives an award of £15,000 plus the opportunity to become Assistant Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra for up to one year. He has been assistant conductor of the Orchestre National de France since 2017.

The other finalists were Harry Ogg and Alexander Colding Smith (who was the favourite in the audience poll, taken during the competition's final evening).

For the first time in 2018, the competition accepted entrants from Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Other changes for this 15th competition, were that the age limit was reduced from 35 to 30, that the final round of the competition was streamed live on medici.tv (where it can still be streamed on demand) and that the preliminary rounds of the competition were open to the public for the first time.

Created by Donatella Flick in 1990, the competition aims to help a young conductor establish an international conducting career, bridging the gap between conservatoire training and professional life.

Posted: 1 December 2018

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