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This is an excellent idea so that no judge knows whose entering into the competition.

I don't believe in them either, and I think that YouTube is helping to promote anything except for pure speed and technique more than anything because this is what gets the attention of the audience.

Sadly there's a lot of music and musicianship lost amongst the huge competition that YouTube has become. How many super genious nine year-olds have you seen lately on YouTube that play everything at a break neck speed with no musical abilities?

The bad part of this is these kids will grow up and play in the competitions and only show off their brilliant technique without the musical side of things as well.

Sadly we've lost this part of the musical-face on the public. They now only see the fast playing with note-perfection and rarely if ever ever hear the slower movements, or the more lyrical music that's out there.

I commend people like RachFan who has recently done his recordings of the late Russian composers. This is a rare treat out there, and is totally different from yet again another Chopin Etude played with metronomically perfect fast speed, but no sence of the music that these are meant to be.

John

Good article! Thanks for posting.
They should have done better research. Eugene Pridonoff doesn't teach at "Cincinnati University" but at the University of Cincinnati's College Conservatory of Music.

There are many out there like you. But consider this as well. Many of the young pianists out there DO believe in piano competitions. Competitions may not jump start everyone's career, but they do provide a vehicle for exposure and a way to get some seasoning in pressure situations. Many of the reform proposals are in fact coming from the musicians. That doesn't suggest a general feeling that the whole idea should be swept away.

What is the alternative to competitions these days? Being a street musician has its attractions, but it's awfully hard to develop a following in the absence of modern competitions and the exposure they bring (even to the 'losers'). YouTube and other web ventures may fill in to some extent, but the jury is still out on whether competitions will be swept away by technical progress. The very fact that they have proliferated over time tells us something about the demand for them. The coin may be somewhat debased by having so many of them, but to the participants they still seem to have a lot of usefulness.

I suspect a pianist like Steven Beus may very well succeed in building a successful piano career, even though he didn't make it out of the first round of the Cliburn. The exposure he has already received has given him a platform. Now he can go out and stand on his own two legs. He has street cred!

Another problem with the "fast and loud" school of piano playing that some people say dominates competition, is the danger of it training the audience that such playing is the hallmark of pianistic excellence.

It takes a while, doesn't it, before most people feel like they have enough experience to trust their own judgment over that of the judges, if it happens at all? At most people will have a sort of 'I don't know art but I know what I like' attitude, that assumes that their plebeian tastes are flawed.

I am fortunate that there's a competition in my neighborhood (literally) that brings in recognizable names on the international competition circuit. I had to work for most of it but I did get to listen to several pianists.

While I was in awe of all their technical skills, I was really shocked at how few of them impressed me with their musicality (I expected to be blown away by that too, across the board, and wasn't).

I was, however, almost literally blown away by the volume. Liszt and Rach, of course, figured prominently in most programs. After one evening spent in the concert hall, my ears literally RANG for a day and a half. I am not exaggerating. I spoke to some who were trying to attend a majority of the competitor's appearances, who said that people were trying to find places to sit that were out of "the blast zone" with limited success. Several of these were piano majors so we're not talking about people who have limited experience in piano recitals.

Perhaps that's why some judges' abilities are coming into question? Maybe they're literally being deafened

"After one evening spent in the concert hall, my ears literally RANG for a day and a half. I am not exaggerating. I spoke to some who were trying to attend a majority of the competitor's appearances, who said that people were trying to find places to sit that were out of "the blast zone" with limited success."

What it finally came to, for me, is that I never fail to bring foam earplugs to our local concert series. It was that, or end up deaf as a post.

I love the series, and we had some great performers last year. It's a cozy-sized hall--- I was seated 15 feet from Valentina Lisitza (the whole performance, plus four or five encores)--- but boy, was I glad to take fifteen or twenty decibels off the volume.

You know, I wonder what Liszt's audiences thought about his volume? We know what the piano's thought, if pianos could think!

Maybe it's because musicianship takes a lot more hard work to make it more appealing to the listener's ear than fast playing or loud playing. I guess judges just don't listen much to softer pieces anymore...

I guess I just don't understand this open hunting season on judges. Judges are often prized professors at the best conservatories. Many of the barbs and zingers directed at judges and judging often come from other judges who are unhappy. We should take this with a healthy grain of salt.

Why do mere mortals like most of us (the people who couldn't perform at the level of the worst losers at the major competitions) seem entitled to assert that judges are stupid clods who think speed and loudness are the prime virtues. Why do we have the temerity to think that we understand beautiful, sublime, innovative playing while the professionals in the field are ignorant conformists.

Yes, there are some clear incentive problems in judging, but frankly people, have a little humility about how little YOU know and how much these maligned judges DO know.

Important note. A competition might appeal to/stand out to some listeners more so than a festival, so it is an advantage to have multiple channels of exposure.


...either time.

Daniel

On a similar note, has anyone ever noticed that the most successful American Idol contestants tend to be runners-up?

i think that article is really right about the current judging system, which is broken. i also agree that judges should judge contestants without seeing or knowing who's playing but only listening to the pianist playing, which will eliminate the pre-assumption of the contestant.

in recent Cleveland competition, i saw some judges just flipping over the contestant bio/program during competition recitals. even though there's nothing wrong about it, it would give the judge the assumption before he/she even hears the performance, i think. if judges are only listening to a pianist without knowing about him/her, then it would be more likely for the judges to judge the performance by the performance or music creation itself, which would ensure some fairness at least, and judges will not know whether it's his/her student who's playing.

i totally agree also that there should be some standard judging system setup to ensure all transparency in scoring. every judge's score should be shown immediately after each performance and highest and lowest score should be excluded. i think like the skating system, there should be 2 different levels of judging - 1) technical aspect and 2) artistic impression (of a performance), and 2 parts should be made up for the total percentage of whole scoring.

Another approach, as opposed to excluding high and low scores, is to aggregate only rankings. That prevents a judge manipulating the outcome by low-balling everyone but their favorite.

Not sure I agree with the concept of contestant anonymity. Sounds dehumanizing. Like going to a concert with nothing on stage but a CD player. Perhaps a Disclavier might be a slight improvement.

Not sure I like the idea of dehumanizing the judging either. Can you imagine a criminal jury passing a verdict with no deliberation or discussion? Might as well have a machine do it. Just need the right programmer.

Howard

I know this won't be a popular position on these forums, but I think the whole idea of a piano competition is absurd.

Competing for what? Money? Fame? Career? And who wins? A handful of people who can play the dead composers extremely well?

The more I think about it, the more absurd it becomes to me. They even have this kind of thing in the art world where a few "judges" award ribbons to what they think is the "best" art. Absurd again.

The real reason for piano competitions is to draw attention to classical piano music and publicize a practice that, when you really think about it, damages more people than it rewards.

Attention.

However you look at it, competition, performance, even posting on internet forums, is basically a way to get attention. It's part of being human. Everybody does it a little differently, and everyone may state different reasons for doing it, but I think it all boils down to attention.

Personally, I love blind competitions or auditions. I keep remembering the stories of big orchestras that didn't have blind auditions who just coincidentally happened to have only white men in them. The second they started having blind auditions, women and non-white performers just "happened" to get picked. Now, many orchestras that started out all white and male for decades have become nearly half-and-half, with far more minority participation.

Blind auditions are the only thing that's fair. I would feel much more comfortable and as if I were being judged on my music and not my makeup in a blind audition.

In that case blind audition is not going to help the "complainers" of competitions then.

...And Liszt's piano was much softer than our's today. I heard an 1840 Erard in a concert two weeks ago. The three pianists from Mainland China included their teacher Yuan Sheng. This very old instrument did not sound thin and tubby, but very much like a modern piano except the sound volume was ear piercing. He along with his two students played everything from Liszt's Concert Etudes, to Chopin Ballades, Nocturnes, Preludes, and other pieces.

Liszt supposedly broke the pianos built during his day. I wonder how much this is true or just stories because these people played this instrument just like anyone would play a piano.

It's too bad the the competitions have come down to this. The shear noise level is inexcusable, and very damaging aurally in the end.

John

My point about Liszt is that loudness is not a modern conceit. The instruments he was using later in life likely could make a racket every bit as loud as today's concert instruments.

Is the drive toward technical pyrotechnics (fast and loud, which everyone seems to deplore) driven by the character of judging? Are the tastes of these supposedly stupid conservatory professors the real problem? I doubt it. I suspect what we are seeing is the rational strategizing of the contestants. The ability to play soft and sensitive slow pieces or movements may simply be taken for granted. You have to toss some of this stuff in between your tours de force, but it isn't the meat of your program. This is not the fault of judging. It is inherent in the high level of the all of the performers.

There is a rather clear parallel with 'sports' like ice skating. To my untrained eye, ice skating competitions are not really won or lost on graceful and slow body movements but by whether or not you hit your triple or quadruple jumps. These truly high level athletic pyrotechnics are actually the most 'objective' thing in the judges arsenal. The skaters' emotional depth only counts when there is essentially a tie on these other technical aspects of the performance.

Now, I suspect that there may still be some room for panache and originality. But it has to come after you have demonstrated that your technique is first rate. But exhibiting panache is risky. You may put off people who have a particular sound in their mind that they associate with composer X. Well, that's the subjectivity that people seem to want.

There's a line in horse racing about people who always bet the chalk. They're called losers. We're all worried about competitions forcing everyone to play in the same boring style. I'm not convinced that this is true, and it probably isn't a rational strategy either. In a winner-take-all competition, playing it safe is almost guaranteed to get you .... a pat on the back. You have to stand out to win. If you are one millimeter worse than the person the judges choose or one kilometer worse it doesn't matter. You lose. In other words, if your choice of how to stand out offends a judge and you lose, that's tough, but you were likely to lose anyway if you played it safe. The prize only goes to the venturesome person (assuming they're all technical virtuosi) who stands out in a way that impresses a sufficient fraction of the judges. The winner is thus likely to be a risk taker.

I think that the talk about a pianist's ability to play loud and fast(or have incredible technique... however one wants to describe it)as:

1. the most important contest winning attribute in today's competitions

2. a quality that has only recently become important

is a significant overstatement. Almost all the great pianists of the past and the contest winners from 50 or more years ago were also terrific technicians.

I think there may be a lot more pianists today with incredible technique than there were 50 or 100 years ago. And I think one must have terrific technique as a prerequisite for winning a competition.