A word or two about music competitions

I was in a discussion last night about the recent passing of the late Van Cliburn, and inevitably the topic of music competitions came up. When Van Cliburn was awarded the Gold Medal in the First Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in 1950s Moscow, he was making a grand statement that music transcends politics, and the real winner was actually the art of piano, which soared above any other agendas. (There is a rumour whereby the head of the jury called Khruchev before announcing the results to ask what he should do, to which the Secretary General himself answered “If the American is the best, give him the first prize.”). Van Cliburn was given a hero’s welcome-home parade back in the States, and a huge international career was launched. Where Cliburn’s prize and pianism belongs in history is very clear, but why would young competition winners these days expect such heroic acknowledgement from the public? 

What does winning a competition mean these days? In most cases, if the award is prestigious enough, it is accompanied by a respectable amount of money, and several engagements. These concerts focus more on the “winner of competition X”, rather than the artist themselves; after all, competitions are much better established and connected than individual musicians, and they need the PR to survive.  After this honeymoon period is over, if the musician is clever enough to create some connections by themselves, they might be able to continue building some kind of upward momentum for a musical career (whatever that means), but in most cases, a winner is forever forgotten as soon as the next one comes. The conveyor belts of competitions and their winners on display has multiplied disproportionally to the needs of the music listeners. Perhaps, it is an egg and chicken situation, since many of these winners in a few years are more likely to be working as jurors, than performers.  (There are still exceptions were some exceptional musicians do come out of the competition system and go on to launch grand careers. This is unfortunately becoming more and more rare, and I strongly believe that the result is purely circumstantial, and that these artists would have been part of the international performing network, even without the prize).

Piano playing is an art, not a sport: it sounds patronising to have to remind anyone of this, but we have forgotten. A runner or a swimmer wants to become the quickest one around, and to prove this it is necessary to measure by advanced means the speed, the time results and placing, with extreme accuracy.  It doesn’t matter if the first and second place runners are one hundredth of a second apart, the difference is scientifically recorded. But how can a such a method be applied to music and art? How can you measure the difference of "one hundredth" in music?  Although not openly accepted by organisers, a competitor playing faster and with fewer wrong notes, is more likely to win.  But even if there was some miraculous, utopic proof that the winner of a competition is the best musician, that would be true only amongst the handful of artists that were present on this event. In other words, even if the results could be cleanly and correctly measured, they could only have value as a PR tool.

But before getting into the topic of measured results, there is the parody of politics within the competitions. Power games surrounding jurors and their own students who are in the competition is something competitors have to accept. I remember, during a competition I was taking part in, it was discovered that one of our fellow competitors was not only a student of a member of the jury (which was not allowed in that particular competition, for the sake of “transparency”), but she was actually taking lessons and advice from her teacher during the whole competition (competitors are not allowed any contact with members of the jury while they are still actively competing). In the semi-final the competitors were expected to play a 75 minute programme, a huge task even for highly experienced pianists. The competitor in question, a tiny Chinese girl, couldn’t finish the last work of her programme. Perhaps she lacked the experience, or probably stamina, and as things started falling apart, she had to cut short the last work by ten minutes, which should mean that she would be automatically disqualified. Not many people were surprised, however, to see her name in the list of pianists passing through to the final round, where she was awarded sixth prize. What benefits would such an award have in her career is unclear, but she was part of a system much beyond her responsibilities and understanding, and on that day the system was in her favour. Such events don’t shock, they don’t even raise an eyebrow to the seasoned competitors.

The young musician’s attitude, behaviour and expectations towards, and during, competitions is a also a topic worth examining. One of the biggest values of competitions is that they give a platform, essentially a chance to be heard, to young people, and they can serve as an invaluable training process for developing repertoire, musicianship and understanding of performing responsibility. The biggest lesson, like in the example above, is of course that fairness doesn’t matter in this circuit (in life also?), and most musicians going from competition to competition have long forgotten the value of learning new works, and they keep playing the same repertoire again and again, hoping that one day the system will also be in their favour, and award them a prize. As for the performing responsibility, it is hard to give a value to it, when most of the performances in competitions are done in empty halls, in front of a panel of bored professional jurors: no communication, no active links with the audience, no applauses.

But that brings me to a much more fundamental question, which is why do we play music, and why would taking part in a competition serve any of our musical needs? The purpose of playing music is sharing a musical idea with a group of people, in which case the musician’s priority should be to find these audiences and honestly share these ideas. A competition serves the purposes of self glory, mainly of the competition itself, perhaps also of its winners. I wonder what would the result be if all these young musicians were to put their efforts in finding audiences, and sharing music in all surroundings and circumstances. Sadly enough, the people holding the keys to the competition prizes are older musicians, teachers, jurors, that have their own beliefs about performing art, which keys ironically belong to their generation, not to the one they are judging.

Young artists should realise that they are the ones that must shape performing arts today and in the future. They need to decide, experiment and share what music and performance should be like. This judgment must not be handed to them by teachers and competition organisers, in the form of a prize.