Niklas Hoffmann

The winner of the fourteenth Donatella Flick Conducting Competition is the twenty-six-year-old German conductor Niklas Benjamin Hoffmann. The Duke of Kent presented Niklas Hoffmann with the award, following a public concert on Thursday 17 November 2016 at which the London Symphony Orchestra was conducted by three finalists at London's Barbican Hall in the UK. Each finalist conducted the Overture to Verdi's La Forza del Destino, five movements each of Elgar's Enigma Variations and one movement each of Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances. The other finalists were thirty-one-year-old Vlad Vizireanu from Romania and Kerem Hasan, a twenty-four-year-old conductor from the UK.

The announcement of the winner was made on the stage of London's Barbican Hall by Lennox Mackenzie, LSO sub-leader and the Chairman of the Competition's jury, which also comprised conductors Antonio Pappano, Carlo Rizzi, Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Yuri Temirkanov, soprano Dame Felicity Lott and LSO principal bassoon Rachel Gough.

As well as shaping each competition to ensure the best possible platform for the young conductors who take part, Donatella Flick, the competition's Founder, provides a prize of £15,000 for the winner to support a period of specialist study. Niklas Hoffmann also becomes the LSO's assistant conductor for a year, where he will be given the opportunity to work with the LSO and its family of conductors in the preparation of concerts, attend numerous rehearsals, and may also conduct the LSO in concert. He will also take part in events for LSO Discovery, the Orchestra's award-winning music education and community programme.

Inaugurated by Donatella Flick in 1990 under the patronage of the Prince of Wales, the biennial Donatella Flick Conducting Competition aims to advance the careers of young conductors and help the winner to establish an international conducting career. The competition is open to candidates up to the age of thirty-five who are citizens of the twenty-eight member countries of the European Union.

During the course of the Competition, twenty conductors were short-listed from nearly two-hundred applicants by an independent selection panel. During the first two days of the Competition the short-listed candidates conducted the Guildhall Symphony Orchestra before the jury selected ten semi-finalists for Round 2 and then three finalists.

Niklas Benjamin Hoffmann, born in 1990 in Iserlohn (Germany), started his musical education with piano and clarinet lessons. Playing in the Markish Youth Orchestra, he was fascinated by the sound and energy of a full orchestra. While holding an internship at Theater Hagen, he started taking conducting lessons with Florian Ludwig, general music director of theatre and opera, which led to his first engagement as repetiteur for two opera projects at Theater Hagen.

In 2011, he started studying orchestral conducting with Nicolas Pasquet, Gunter Kahlert, Markus Frank and Martin Hoff at the Franz Liszt University of Music, Weimar. He also received important inspiration in masterclasses with Jorma Panula and Clark Rundell. He now works with Czech orchestras in Teplice and Hradec Kralové, the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra, Staatskapelle Weimar and the Leipzig Middle German Radio Symphony Orchestra. Aside from conducting, he is also a composer, aiming at a spirited interaction between musicians and audience.

Since October 2015 he has been chief conductor of the academic orchestra in Göttingen and in April 2016 he was awarded a Dirigentenforum (Conductors' Forum) scholarship, the German Music Council's extensive support programme for young conductors.

Donatella Flick is a philanthropist who is world renowned for her support of the arts. In 1990 she founded the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition after realising that there were very few opportunities for young conductors to gain conducting experience from great orchestras and with established conductors. She works hard to ensure that the Competition is one of the foremost conducting competitions in the world, providing not just the winner but also everyone who takes part with the assistance and opportunities needed to launch a successful career.

The final concert of the Donatella Flick LSO Conducting Competition will be broadcast on Classic FM in the UK on Thursday 24 November 2016.

Information: www.donatellaflickconductingcompetition.com

Posted: 22 November 2016

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