High-pressure piano competitions, for long, have long seen with suspicion by serious artists around the world.
Glenn Gould said that piano competitions left their “eager, ill-advised supplicants forever stunted, victims of a spiritual lobotomy.”
Maybe yes. But one thing seems to be sure: Piano competitions don’t work, and here’s why.
Heard of Van Cliburn?
When he won Russia’s International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958, Cliburn became a world-wide celebrity overnight…and many feel ‘that’ was the problem.
This is an example that is often cited whenever the pitfalls of piano competitions are spoken of, and how it can make a crucial difference to the lives of gifted artists (in a bad way).
Mr. Cliburn retired from the concert stage two decades later, burned out at the unripe age of 43; experts blame it on the fact that he became a superstar overnight.
Besides, very few winners went on to have indisputably major solo careers.
Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas, launched in 1962 in honor of the Texas-born pianist, has several gold medalists who fail to make it big.
So why do music competitions produce winners who don’t go on to become major artists?
Its because the winners are chosen by juries, who are unable to agree on great artists.
Their disagreement inevitably leads to compromise, which more often than not produces average winners, who are good enough to please all the jurors, but not skillful enough to thrill any of them.
In recent years, Boris Giltburg, an Israeli pianist who won Belgium’s Queen Elisabeth Music Competition, had mixed feelings about his victory. “I’m a bit angry at the world for not having come up with another way of discovering talent other than competitions.” He also said he would never serve on a jury for a classical-music competition.
Mr. Giltburg’s comment attracted widespread attention because he was the winner of the world’s most prestigious musical competitions.
A few decades back winning artists would become popular throughout the music world. They would get exclusive recording contracts and were booked by symphony orchestras. Sometimes they even made it onto television. (Mr. Cliburn appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “The Tonight Show.”)
However, none of that is true now.
Today, more and more are now self-marketing themselves using internet technologies as iTunes, YouTube and podcasting.
Despite that, organizers still bother to hold music competitions, despite knowing that the road to success for classical musicians is no longer well defined (now).
Full story on WSJ. Read more here.
Classical Pianist & conductor Mitsuko Uchida says young pianists are constantly pushed under lot of pressure to be a star instantly. Japanese born Uchida says it takes a lifetime to understand music.
After plying professionally for more than 40 years, Uchida is still at the top of her game, which Uchida attributes to her slow and gradual rise. “Nowadays young pianists are pushed, pushed, pushed. There is such pressure to be a star instantly. Everything has to be instant, everything has to be shared on Social media. That is not sharing, that is advertising. Sharing is what happens in a room with a few people at a concert, everyone focused on something they love.”
Uchida also insists that piano players need to develop their unique style. “You have to have your own sound. Think of the pianist Rudolph Serkin. He could play on the worst upright with strings missing, and within a few bars you would know it was him.” says Uchida.
What Do Super Talented Piano Students Need Most to Succeed?
It’s the summer recess and school’s out – but not always for musicians. All over the world there are places where young performers can continue their studies. I was at the Aspen Music Festival and School a couple of weeks ago playing and teaching, and I’ve just arrived in Santa Barbara to spend a few days at the Music Academy of the West doing the same thing.
Both of these institutions have long, illustrious histories and their lists of alumni contain many of the names which appear on major international concert stages. (They are also both in glorious locations!)
But then comes September and a new school year and these scattered students will return to or begin new lives at hundreds of music colleges, academies, conservatories and universities across the world. They arrive with hopes and objectives: to immerse themselves in music, to play their instruments better, to prepare for a future career, to gain performance experience, even sometimes to become rich and famous.
Many will leave disappointed and still more will leave with different jobs than they expected at the start of their education, but that is another discussion. What about those very few who are truly destined for major solo careers?
Nothing is ever guaranteed, but there are some musicians who you know within a few bars have something special which at least gives them a stab at success.
Thinking particularly about pianists, what advice would I give to the few, most talented (and ambitious) ones entering music college? I would say ‘learn concertos’. Almost every career is started with concerto appearances. Even if a solo debut creates a initial stir the building up of a solid reputation will come with orchestras and conductors. It’s partly the decline of the piano recital – I’m told that there are fewer recital presenters curating series as every year passes; but it’s also that the opportunity to play on important stages and within earshot of important managers will happen with an orchestra sitting on one’s left. No unknown young pianist will get to play recitals in large halls but many have had the chance to stand in at the last minute for an indisposed artist in a concerto. Such an opportunity (at the Ravinia Festival with Christoph Eschenbach and the Chicago Symphony in 1999) launched the sky rocket which is Lang Lang; and ironically the career of the pianist he flew in to replace, Andre Watts, burst into brilliance in a similar way some decades earlier.
Because conservatory exams and auditions normally require solo repertoire students tend only to crack open the scores of piano and orchestra works when they have a date in the diary for which they are preparing – whether a concerto competition or a public performance. But by the time a career is beginning, and the contracts are being signed, and the travel agent is busy booking flights, it’s almost too late – unless you learn phenomenally quickly, or drive yourself to the edge of a nervous breakdown.
Even a casual music lover could probably name thirty piano concertos at the drop of a hat, each lasting an average of half an hour. That’s almost a day of complicated, demanding notes, often rehearsed with too little time, usually performed under great pressure, frequently with jet lag. Whilst you’re still at college and have the time prepare at least a handful of the most familiar ones and a few unfamiliar ones too. I’ve been asked over the years to play the 5th Saint-Saens concerto at least as much as the 5th Beethoven – and my own baptism of fire aged 22 was to have to play them both in the same week and both for the first time, at the Barbican Centre with the London Symphony Orchestra. I certainly felt older if not wiser in the days which followed.
Learn concertos before you have to, and learn them well. They will become part of your life as you play them with different orchestras and conductors throughout your career. And as you stand in the wings with the orchestra tuning and the lights dimming they will await you at the keyboard like old, intimate friends.
Source: telegraph.co.uk
Pianist Conrad Tao: Major accomplishments at a very young age
22-year old Conrad Tao, an Illinois native, is a professional piano player (he also plays the violin and composes music); Tao’s piano career is currently taking him all over the world.
Conrad Tao was the only classical musician named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” musicians list in 2011. He won a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant the following year. Conrad has been dubbed a musician of “probing intellect and open-hearted vision” by the New York Times, a “thoughtful and mature composer” by NPR, and “ferociously talented” by TimeOut New York.
When Conrad Tao was only 18 months old, his parents found him sitting at the family piano, plucking out Mary Had a Little Lamb to the best of a toddler’s ability. On that same piano, when he was 8 years old, Tao practiced Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 12 in A Major, K. 414 for his concerto debut. Since then, he has given critically acclaimed performances (of master composers) around the world.
His absolute mastery of the keyboard, superb interpretation, and total involvement in the music, will take this young man to great heights in his piano career.
Watch: Conrad Tao on the piano playing RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No. 2: III. Allegro scherzando
Conrad will be the guest musician with Tucson Symphony Orchestra, where he will play a pair of Gershwin’s works, one — the seminal Gershwin classic “Rhapsody in Blue” — that he’s played before and the composer’s “I Got Rhythm” variations, which he’s never played before.
“I think my approach with both of these pieces is really to try to somehow capture some kind of ’20s sound, some kind of specific 1920s energy. I think the ’20s were an interesting, strange cocktail of American pop culture and I think both of these pieces reflect that,” said Conrad.
Lucas Debargue, the Young Classical Pianist with few years of serious training is breaking all the rules
Classical Pianist Lucas Debargue, used to work at a Parisian grocery store, entered Moscow’s prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition with only three years of serious training under his belt, and walked away with the Critics’ award, and the Fourth Prize, a recording contract with Sony. Meet Lucas Debargue, the Young Classical Pianist with few years of serious training is breaking all the rules.
“Today, you can come out on stage with a nice smile and the First Piano Concerto of Chopin and be considered a master of piano. For me, that is totally meaningless. You can be a master of the piano without being a musician at all,” Lucas Debargue.
Born in Paris, there were no musicians in the family, and it wasn’t until the age of nine that he discovered classical music albums in his home. He taught himself to read music, copied out scores, and at 11, entered the Conservatory of Compiègne in the class of one Madame Meunier.
“I remember when I entered her class. I started showing her parts of Chopin Scherzi, Liszt ‘Mephisto Waltz,’ etc. I played these as I could — they were not clean, a total mess — but there was something there, and I was totally committed,” says Debargue.
The commitment lasted only four years. In high school, he joined a rock band and played bass guitar. Between the ages of 16 and 19 — considered crucial years of a pianist’s development — Debargue seldom touched a piano. Instead, he studied literature in Paris, and for two years, worked part-time at a supermarket.
At the age of 20, he took his raw talents to Rena Shereshevskaia at the Conservatoire de Rueil-Malmaison. She remains his teacher to this day, at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris.
Barry Douglas, another member of the 2015 jury — and himself a former winner of the 1986 competition — says Debargue made a memorable impression on him at the 2015 International Tchaikovsky (historically, one of the most prestigious competitions for pianists, boasting former winners like Van Cliburn, Grigory Sokolov, and a pianist of growing renown, Daniil Trifonov).
“I can’t divulge what the musings of the jury were at the time due to confidentiality agreements, but Debargue struck me as being a talented young man with a great future. His musicianship was full of originality and there were many things to marvel at,” says Douglas.
“We, Russian members of the jury, loved and supported him. However, the foreign members of the jury didn’t accept him. They kept saying that he is unprofessional and pushed him down with all conceivable means, fair or unfair,” said Boris Berezovsky, winner of the 1990 Tchaikovsky competition.
Even with a hung jury, among the “things to marvel at” were Debargue’s jazz improvisations, both onstage and behind the scenes. An omnivorous music consumer, Debargue discovered Thelonius Monk, Charlie Parker and Erroll Garner sometime between the age of 22 and Moscow, and picked up enough of the art form to support himself playing in jazz clubs.
“For me, some of the jazz players at the beginning of the 20th century are among the best musicians ever. It’s not a question of style or genre or the kind of music you play, but a question of mastering music.” says the pianist.
In this sense, Debargue — a jazz aficionado who forsook the traditional route of classical training — rather ironically embodies the freedoms and improvisatory practices of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt, perhaps more so than the majority of classical artists playing today. He learns everything from Bach to Schoenberg by ear, first. Then he streamlines the various sections in his mind, and refines his ability daily.
“Some of the classical players can’t do anything but learn and perform — they do so very nicely, but they’re not full musicians,” says Debargue. “I’m sure Liszt and Chopin would have been very interested in jazz because they were composers, improvisers, and performers.”
While he’s made a name for himself as a classical pianist in part thanks to recognition from the old guard, Debargue doesn’t agree with the established order — the competition jurors who adjudicate their own students, the academic disputes of style and authenticity. His criticisms are many.
“Before I play one note, there are already so many people waiting to find something wrong with my playing. They will say, ‘Ah, it’s not the way it should be!’ But for me, what should be is the music,” says the pianist. “With Scarlatti, for example, I don’t play just one way because he’s a Baroque composer. Baroque is a huge thing and you can’t possibly associate it with all people who lived in that time. We are living in the age of Trump — does that mean we must all be little Trumps?”
With his powers of communication at the piano, the fury of his development and the unabashed willingness to point out deficiencies in the field as he sees them, the case of Lucas Debargue is understandably compelling. It may also be the kind of thing we’ve missed: the artist who holds his ideals with such conviction that he’s willing to upset the established order to explore new territory.
Source: kqed.org
More External Links
- Why Piano Competitions Will Never Yield a Superstar
- The Dark Side of Piano Competitions
- The highs and lows of piano competition
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