Good ol’ competitions… How I hate them!
Posted on 13 August 2009
Reading through the most recent issue of International Piano, I came across an article describing the latest Van Cliburn competition. Naturally the focus was on the controversy generated by choosing a blind pianist, Nobuyuki Tsujii, as one of the gold medallists and also on the fact that all the winners are very young (19, 20 and 23 to be exact).
I listened to one or two of Tsujii’s performances online and thought he sounded excellent. Of course being able to play that well without seeing is incredible, and I can see why the jury might gravitate towards him otherwise. He’s got the pianistic skills required and he’s got a great story that people will find interesting and inspiring.
No major problems so far, but then I get to this little nugget of wisdom, courtesy of no less than “Cliburn president Richard Rodzinski”:
[...] the jury are instructed to look “for someone who can best fulfil the three years of tours rather than someone who will be a big name.”
Argh! The Cliburn competition is one of the biggest and most famous piano competitions in the world. Here is the president of the organization saying in effect that it’s not about the music or the artistry. Rather, it’s about finding someone who can stand being on the road for three years and won’t cancel concerts or play too many wrong notes. This is just so aggravating. The whole reason I’m a musician is because of the creativity, originality and insight one can absorb from an extraordinary performance by an extraordinary artist. I don’t want to hear somebody show up on time and hit all the notes in the right order. You might as well just put someone doing their taxes on stage and call it performance art.
The sad reality for concert promoters is that great artists tend to also be a bit unpredictable. Gould was a maverick and gave up playing in public entirely. Horowitz retired numerous times, including once for a stretch of 12 years. Michelangeli was highly unreliable. In this day and age, Martha Argerich is well-known for canceling performances. In my view you can have only one of two things: you can have great art or you can have the pianist equivalent of an accountant crunching numbers on stage. Attention managers and competition presidents! The safest route is almost never going to be the most successful one.
I don’t want to come across as being too harsh here, but I’m very passionate about this. To hear that the head of such an “important” cultural event as the Cliburn competition is more concerned with contracts and dependability than music and art really makes my blood boil.
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