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Re: Competition article

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2010-04-25 13:30

Sorry - I just got around to reading Michael Johnson's op-ed (which was itself published in the Times last August) and find I have questions that show how little I know about the world of music competitions.

Johnson writes "'The system is broken,' Ivan Ilic, an American pianist in France, told me. 'Competitions have lost their weight in determining careers.'” Have the competitions actually lost their "weight" in launching careers or is it only a loss of credibility among the pianists (or more broadly musicians - there are after all competitions for other instrumentalists and singers as well). Don't these competition winners still have a tremendous edge when trying to build careers in public concert and recital performance?

More puzzling for me: "The Italian virtuoso Roberto Prosseda says he quit the competition game because he found that too much of it can stifle one’s personal style. Juries generally want a 'standard' performance."

Did Prosseda quit playing competitions or judging them? If he meant (as it seems he did) that he quit playing competitively, it makes it sound as if these competitions constitute some kind of cycle of recurring performance venues in which pianists (and other performers?) can, if they wish, continue to participate, much like the pro golf tour, without ever leaving for the wider world of a concert career. Of course, golf and music performance are very different - the pro golf tour IS the career. Or is Prosseda saying that the two aren't so different after all?

Granted that some musicians who compete in these things don't have all that's necessary to build a successful career, but I was always under the apparently naive impression that the whole point of competing for prizes was to become better known, leading to better management contracts and more important exposure to kick off a concert career. Do these things really become ends in themselves even for some of the winners?

Karl

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