 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2010-04-22 12:58
Finally got around to reading Michael Johnson's article -- David, yes, it's interesting; but I'm not so sure that competitions are really any more dishonest now than when I was a student half a century ago. In the 1950s and 1960s, my piano teacher used to brag that all of his students submitted tapes of their own playing, not his, with their applications to competitions and to schools such as Juilliard.
The fact that he even considered it noteworthy to boast that his students didn't cheat on their pre-selection tapes indicates how widespread (nearly universal, according to him) it was in those days for a teacher or a professional to record a tape and submit it with the student's application. Today, students submit videos instead of audio tapes. It takes more-sophisticated movie-making skills to Milli Vanilli a video, but I'll bet there's some of that going on, in addition to the shenanigans Johnson reports.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2010-04-22 13:22
I thought the article, while interesting, was just a rehash of old stories. For example, Rosalyn Tureck has been dead for eight years.
Also, I've heard recordings of Nobuyuki Tsujii and thought he was terrific. His prize was anything but a sop to his handicap.
Ken Shaw
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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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Author: grifffinity
Date: 2010-04-25 15:38
Quote:
In the 1950s and 1960s, my piano teacher used to brag that all of his students submitted tapes of their own playing, not his, with their applications to competitions and to schools such as Juilliard.
In the 1980 movie, The Competition, the teacher (Lee Remick) submitted a tape of herself to "The Competition" on behalf of her student (Amy Irving). Such a cheezy movie but admitedly some of the stereotyping associated with classical music were not far off from reality.
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Author: USFBassClarinet
Date: 2010-04-25 16:10
Someone told me a long time ago that in the big piano performance schools, students would put razors in between the keys on the piano when the competitions came around.
I guess if you can't beat them...take them out of the competition.
At least no one is putting push pins in the tone holes of my clarinet.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2010-04-27 21:59
>>Razor story - could that be true??? >>
I heard that story in the mid-1960s, but I suspect it's an urban legend. Students warned each other to swipe a hankie down the keyboard to make sure nothing stuck up from between the keys. I never heard of a *documented* incident of that kind, however. I never saw a news article or a magazine article describing such an incident with specific details. Nobody ever said to me, "It happened to me at the such-and-such competition." It always happened to some friend of a friend in some vague location, elsewhen and elsewhere.
The logistics of gimmicking a keyboard in secret would be risky. Chances of getting caught would be high. The practice rooms at most schools don't have armed guards or anything like high security, but people do have to sign in for their time slots and there's almost always somebody (or bodies) out there waiting impatiently in the hall. Even if there's nobody waiting, the room is unlocked and the perpetrator could sneak in undetected, the chance of getting caught in the act would be high, because most soundproofed rooms have windows as a basic safety feature. I'm skeptical.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
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