Donatella Flick Conducting Competition, Barbican, London <br></br>Chamber Orchestra of Europe/ Mackerras, Royal Festival Hall, London

Where's the clapometer when you need it?

At first glance, the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition would seem to be as effective at revealing great musicianship as Who wants to be a Millionaire is at revealing great intellect. For each of the three finalists at the Barbican on Tuesday night, only two hours of rehearsal time with the London Symphony Orchestra were allotted, which, according to Musicians Union rules, means that one candidate's rehearsal would have been split by the lunch break. It gets worse. Though the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro was compulsory, the second piece in each competitor's programme was drawn by lot, if you please, at less than 24 hours' notice. Did Christophe Mangou, Dimitiri Slobodeniuk and Ivan Meylemans get much sleep on Monday night? I doubt it.

So pity the young conductor stranded in a high-profile showcase and pray that he doesn't offend his orchestra. Those apparently innocent questions about subdivisions, upbeats and attack can subtly undermine rehearsals, while sabotage is a real and present danger in performance. Method One is to ignore him. Method Two is to follow his directions to the letter, however absurd those directions may be. Needless to say, the latter method is rarely employed. (Most orchestral musicians will go to great lengths to save a performance from disaster.) Except in the case of a conducting competition, that is, when scrupulous attention to every twitch is a point of honour.

At 26, 27 and 31 years of age respectively, Mangou, Slobodeniuk and Meylemans can survive a sleepless night. In the LSO, they also got an orchestra unlikely to take advantage. (Any fluffed entries were quickly resolved by leader Gordan Nikolitch.) But let's continue the case against this competition. Is it possible to judge more than stick-work in repertoire as varied in affect as Stravinsky's Symphony in three movements (Mangou), Janacek's Taras Bulba (Slobodeniuk), and Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin (Meylemans)? And, as the LSO had performed Taras Bulba under Sir Colin Davis only six days before was muscle-memory not an advantage in the Janacek? Yes and no. The careers of many a conductor have been made on similarly scant preparation and with similarly formidable interpretive shadows across their scores. The Flick Final may be brutally gladiatorial, but it's also realistic.

Since part of the prize is a year as Assistant Conductor of the LSO, a vote among the players would seem the most sensible way to decide the winner. Alas, this was not to be and whatever agenda the adjudicating panel of Mauro Bucarelli, Jane Glover, Andrew Marriner, Leif Segerstam and Vassily Sinaisky were following, it remained obscure to the audience. Maybe the candidates were marked for their rehearsal management, their work in the semi-finals or the cut of their tail-coats, but had there been a clapometer at the end of his performance or some means of measuring attentive silence during the course of it, Ivan Meylemans would have won. Like Slobodeniuk (the only finalist to employ full strings for the Mozart) and Mangou, Meylemans missed crucial elements of the Overture – neglecting to link the tutti downbeats across the bars – but he did inject character. And his Bartok showed bravura, accuracy, authority, invention and sensitivity; five out of five to the other two's four and three. Unlike the others, he kept eye-contact with all sections of the orchestra, knowing when to encourage and when to step back. This was convincing, enabling direction but as principal trombonist with the Royal Concertgebouw, Meylemans should know what works for the players.

Bafflingly, it was Christophe Mangou who won. (So bafflingly that I initially mistook his announcement for third place.) Mangou's Stravinsky had none of the specificity of Meylemans's Bartok or Slobodeniuk's sensitively explored Janacek, and lacked argument. More worryingly, he showed a Tilson-Thomas-ish tendency to extraneous gestures of the sort that say "Hey! I'm really digging this!" to the audience, while communicating little reason for that enjoyment through the music. It's not an approach I enjoy but at 26 he's got years of mind-games with orchestras less polished or respectful than the LSO ahead of him and plenty of time to learn how better to direct his energy.

For a model of assured conducting, the Flick finalists might look to Sir Charles Mackerras; nearly 50 years their senior but growing ever more fascinating and fluent. The right-arm problems that dogged him two years ago have gone, leaving a looping, easy, elegant smile of a beat that unfussily communicates the most minute changes in dynamic and tempo. In his edge-of-the-seat exciting performance of Brahms's First Symphony at the Festival Hall there were an abundance of these. Drawing on contemporary accounts of Brahms symphonies and the matchless responsiveness of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Mackerras presented an urgent, tempestuous, tender account to crush all suggestions of Brahms's supposed dry dogmatism. Though I was unconvinced by his wilder accelerandi and the blushing hybrid sonority of reduced strings and modern brass swamped the bass line, this was one of the most directional and inspiring Brahms symphonies I've heard; an example of complete connection between artistry, research and technique. If this is the third way between historic and modern performance practice, count me in.

a.picard@independent.co.uk