Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Adjudicator With Double Standards?

Hello!
So I was at a piano competition recently, watching, and when the adjudicator gave their adjudication for a section they commented on how you should not play forte in music by composers such as Mozart and Beethoven as what we think of forte, but as what their pianos (Mozart's and Beethoven's) in their time would have played forte (perhaps our mezzo forte they suggested) and for this reasoning they gave a competitor who I thought did a fantastic job of a Sonata by Beethoven nothing! Not even an Honourable Mention!

Then a couple sections later the adjudicator gave somebody who played a Bach Prelude and Fugue, and who played it in a somewhat 'romantic' style (used a lot of rubato and for my taste perhaps a bit too much pedal**) first place! The adjudicator commented that "Although this piece was written for Harpsichord, we are playing it on the piano, so we should take full advantage of all the benefits the modern piano gives us!"

So, unless I am missing something here, does this adjudicator have double standards?
Just interested to hear some other peoples thoughts on this!

**I believe that you can use pedal in Bach, just not as much as this person was...

If you want music to sound like it did on a period instrument, then lug in a period instrument.

What was the age level of the competitors? And how large/known is the competition? (That may shine a couple clues on how good the judge is!)

Competitions suck.

No they don't.

Recognizing that I might know the OP and may even have come across him or her at said event and don't want to offend him/her .....I would have to say that there must have been more to it than is being stated. First of all, it's never just a thing of whether you did or didn't do it in such-and-such a way; it's HOW you did it in whatever way you did it, and I've come to see that in these competitions, almost always it's very impressive how the judges are willing to reward very different kinds of approaches, provided the person does it well. And besides, this thing is being presented as though there was just the one factor involved in the people's playing and how it was judged. That's never true; it's never just "did he do the fortes properly or not" or "do I think he approaches Bach wrong."

Take it with as many grains of salt as exist in the universe, because that's how it needs to be taken. It's not that simple -- not nearly.

Many years ago, the New York Philharmonic made a change to its audition policy:

. . . Musicians play from _behind a screen_, so that the
. . . judge couldn't see them.

The effect was an immediate increase in the number of women and non-white players in the orchestra.

. charles

Hmmm....

Potential thread locker arguments...

Amen.

Don't put too much weight in what the adjudicator says/writes. It is just one musician's opinion, not a stated fact. And, at the end of the day, it is just a competition.

Haha!


These competitors she (the adjudicator) was talking to were from like, 16-17 years old. All of them are doing 8th grade, and a couple doing their AMusA. (In Australia 8th grade is the highest grade (AMEB) and AMusA is an associate diploma.)
The adjudicator was a highly accredited examiner and teacher at a music conservatorium here in a Australia (wont say which one... Don't want to plaster that on the internet :P ) She exams all over Australia and is very good... Thats why I thought it strange she came out with this???
But, maybe I read into it wrong, but she did seem to have a bias towards the girls... There was on section this male player clearly deserved to win, and he got second place...
The music competition is a massive eisteddfod where all the adjudicators are highly accredited and are almost all ways teachers from universities.

Mark_C, unfortunately thats how it was presented! She didn't comment on anything else, except for the person who played the Bach, she made some more comments, her words for her were few, and were along the lines of "Beautiful use of Rubato and pedal was good. Some people say we shouldn't pedal at all in Bach, others say use a little, but I think 'Although this piece was written for Harpsichord, we are playing it on the piano, so we should take full advantage of all the benefits the modern piano gives us!"
And when she commented on the kid who played the Beethoven, although she didn't specifically direct it to this pianist, it was pretty obvious who she was talking to as they were the only pianist in the section to play Beethoven.

Charles, thats actually very interesting!





Thats exactly what I think! But unfortunately it can make a student feel upset, perhaps targeted, if an adjudicator changes their attitude about something like that within 2 hours... Or if the adjudicator gives someone who was mediocre first and someone who did a brilliant job perhaps only an Honourable Mention, it can make the pianist who did the good job feel bad about their playing... unfortunately thats just the way it is with competitions
-I was an accompanist for the singing component for this competition, and trust me, its even worse when this happens to the singers... hahaha :P Lots of crying and (rhymes with snitching) about each other... and unfortunately at times, I have to sit and listen to it backstage D: hahaha thank goodness I was playing most of the time :P

Water off a duck's back. If you have that attitude you can enjoy these events. If you take it too seriously, or worry too much about the "ultimate truths" contained in the adjudicator's comments, you can give yourself an unnecessary ulcer and needlessly feel inadequate.

+1

Nope. This is a well-documented effect that screened auditions have had on American orchestras.

At the same time, nothing wrong with some period instruments sometimes

Cool!

But that's not what I meant.

I meant that the adjudication wasn't just based on the things you said. You made it sound like it was -- like, when you said "and for this reasoning they gave a competitor who I thought did a fantastic job of a Sonata by Beethoven nothing" (plus that there couldn't be any suspicion of "double standard" unless you're assuming the decisions had to be based a lot on those things that you said). I'm saying it almost certainly wasn't that simple, and rarely is. Such decisions are rarely so one-dimensional.

Assuming that what you're saying about the judge's view and biases is accurate, there have to have been other factors involved in the decision -- things like how well or not well they did those controversial things you talked about, and/or other musical factors. The fact that the judge didn't talk about any other factors doesn't mean that nothing else was involved (plus, I must say, I can't help wondering if he did talk about some other things but they just didn't stand out to you). Anyway, there's an infinite number of pianistic and musical factors that can be involved in such decisions, and I think they all usually are.

I know that in judging a music competition (any kind of contest at that) it does not come down to one thing that splits first place and not placing at all, but I know this Beethoven piece they played very well and they played it extremely well! There was not one perfect performance in that section and the Beethoven to me stood out above the rest as 'the best', and I think this performer certainly deserved first in their section (the person who got first played Claire Delune (perhaps more difficult than the Beethoven but it was not executed too well) it was good, yes, but not as good as the Beethoven in my opinion.)

But all "this person played this well" or "This person played this better than them" stuff aside, the point of this thread is that the adjudicator changed their belief on something, one second they were saying "We must play on our piano as they would have played in their day" to "We have this modern piano, so we should take full advantage of all its benefits!"

Get what I mean? Is this not a double standard? Or do you think the adjudicator was just changing their thoughts on something to justify the awards they handed out? Which could still be a double standard, or simply that, saying what they want to say to justify their decisions.

Yeah, don't take any judge/adjudicator comments too seriously. In my last world martial arts competition, I narrowly won kata/forms because one judge scored me extremely low. Since I was a higher rank than her, I asked her afterwards why she scored me so low. She said my kicks were weak. (They are my strongest asset.) I made it a point to win every single fight in the latter half of the tournament by using only kicks. After I won, she came up to me and said, "Wow, you have really nice kicks." I smiled and said, "That's not what you said after my kata. Remember?" She walked away. After 20+ years of competing, I could get away with that. But that's not the point...

Point is -- judges are human. They hear what they hear and see what they see in the moment. They make judgements, and not always the best ones or the ones that adhere to reality. You can let it bother you, or you can brush it off. Brushing it off doesn't mean you can't learn from the experience and come back stronger the next time, but it does mean you'll have a more enjoyable experience.

I know, and I agree Im not overly fussed- I wasn't the competitor nor were they my students, but just this situation got me thinking- thats why I posted here, to hear what others thought!

I don't know the adjudicator's thoughts, obviously, but I have a hunch that this person may have some fairly strong ideas about transferring Baroque music to the modern piano which may follow a different logic than how they think about transferring Classical era music to the modern piano. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, IMO, regardless of whether I agree with their opinions about it.

A thought:

The adjudicator might simply be treating students as individuals.

I can see a situation where I would react similarly to this judge. Student A plays a classical work but lacks polish and a sense of style; therefore I might draw the student's attention to the fact that dynamic fluctuations were more tempered in the classical era and ask that they go for a more nuanced, controlled shading in their sound.

Student B, however, plays a somewhat romanticized Bach Prelude and Fugue, but their interpretation is thoughtful and their execution excellent.

And really, it probably just comes down to the fact that Student B connected better with the music and the audience than Student A. Sure, as an adjudicator I have to write down some comments, but people often don't understand that the relationship between comments and the final result is a strange one. Often, the best performers are the ones who simply give you more to say (both positive and negative), whereas the worst performers are the ones who don't inspire you to say or think much of anything.

Non-white women superior to White-men?

White-men raise your voice!

Oh I'm certain there were. Like...

1- The judge didn't like the competitor's suit.
2- Somebody refused to go on a "date" with, well, somebody.
3- Either party said the wrong thing in the hallway.
4- Bribes were involved.
5- The judge skipped their meds that day.
6- ...or had one too many right before.

Considering how antiquated, arbitrary and surreal (even though commonly held) that belief is, about the limitations of Mozart's piano and all, it makes one wonder what the heck the judge was actually thinking. Or maybe not thinking.

Competitions do suck. At that level, the losing competitor did not get a stipend or scholarship they should've gotten.