Music competitions are corrupt - Julian Lloyd Webber

[Brian]

-

He claimed that many teachers used the competitions as a way to promote their own pupils.

"Everyone knows it, but no one says it, because when you're in the profession, you don't," he told The Times. "There are obvious exceptions, such as BBC Young Musician of the Year, which is not corrupt at all, but you have these competitions for violins, cello, piano and it's all about who you studied with."

The musician said he would tell students at Birmingham City University, where he will speak on Monday, that "they have to get the right teacher or there's no point in entering".

Barry Shiffman, executive director of the Banff International String Quartet Competition in Canada and a former juror for competitions at Wigmore Hall in London, admitted that music competitions had a bad reputation. "I can understand how many people feel there are problems," he said.

"The importance of a transparent, nuanced systems of voting is critical, and to date there are not good standards that are utilised at all competitions. In Banff we have worked hard on a system of voting that prevents abuse and unfair punitive voting that could give unfair advantage to a competitor."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/10990138/Julian-Lloyd-Webber-the-majority-of-music-competitions-are-corrupt.html

[Karl Henning]

It's a peculiarly tough environment.

[king ubu]

PRIZE WINNERS
1st prize: Ginette NEVEU (France)

2nd prize: David OISTRAKH (USSR
)
3rd prize: Henry TEMIANKA (Great Britain)

4th prize: Boris GOLDSTEIN (USSR
)
5th prize: Ljerko SPILLER (Yugoslavia)

6th prize: Mary Luisa SARDO (Italy)

7th prize: Ida HAENDEL (Poland)

8th prize: Hubert ANTON (Estonia)

9th prize: Bronisław GIMPEL(Poland)

those were the days ... though I bet Haendel would have ranked third with the proper teacher 

[Brian]

those were the days ... though I bet Haendel would have ranked third with the proper teacher 

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Alexander Melnikov, Ingrid Jacoby, and Rian de Waal failed to reach the finals of the Van Cliburn competition.

[king ubu]

I don't follow any classical competitions ... but the mere fact that classical labels churn out new talents and discoveries of the millenium every other second makes me weary of this kind of stuff. Which, I guess, results in me not listening to enough contemporary, even less younger artists. I tend to go by word-of-mouth (which includes the GMG community and other folks on other forums, as well as a few friends in real life). So the question really is: what's the purpose of these competitions anyway? Giving young musicians the possibility of a break? Really? America's got talent? I know, there's always the show business component, no matter if it's the next pop starlet or the next insanely talented violin player, but ...

[Brian]

The trouble is that young musicians are more talented and more proficient than musicians of any generation past. And there are more of them, from more global cultures. The result is that today there are probably 200 pianists who are capable of the technique and ability (not necessarily artistic expression!) exhibited by Rubinstein, Horowitz, etc. How exactly are we supposed to sort through all of these to find the real artists? Unfortunately competitions tend to reward technical proficiency rather than artistic merit, at least in my view, but all these hundreds of musicians flood onto record labels and into concert halls anyway. What else are they supposed to do? Can you blame them?

[Pat B]

A few months ago I attended part of the Menuhin Competition. I'll stop short of accusing the judges of corruption, but I will say that the results did not match what I heard and left me wondering what the criteria were.

Edit: I should add that all the competitors I heard were astonishingly good, both technically and musically, for their ages.

[king ubu]

I'm more familiar with the situation in jazz - but I guess generally it's very similar ever since they have started frequenting those silly jazz schools, which give 'em tools but not artistry and not necessarily good ideas either ... but technically, yes, they're excellent of course.

Should record labels not care about what they release? Namely not the latest album of some technically good but musically empty teenager, but their talent scouts should sift through in order to discover the two or three real talents of thos two hundred or two thousand. But then, I guess, it all became so fast, they don't have the time for that, they need to deliver according to their business plans and bring in the revenue the shareholders are asking for ... oy vey! Luckily, there are many smaller labels that don't seem to be as much part of that rat race and able to build careers and partner musicians (in jazz, which all in all seems to be a friction of the classical market only, it's much harder - artists usually pay for their own CD productions, even if they appear on a name label - they need the disc to get gigs - and they need those gigs in order to earn the money back that they put into the CD production).

I guess honest competitions could help in pinning down real talent, but for that you'd need independent and knowledgeable folks - and you need money and I guess that's where all the problems begin ...

[jochanaan]

I can still remember watching the televised final of a piano competition in the 1970s with my mother.  There were three finalists, a young man who played the Rachmaninoff Third, another young man who played Liszt 1, and a young lady who played Chopin 1.  My mother and I both thought the young woman was by far the best, the most musical and lyrical player--but the prize went to the young man playing Rach 3 despite what we both considered a lackluster performance.

So apparently the corruption has been going on for a long time.

[Ken B]

I can still remember watching the televised final of a piano competition in the 1970s with my mother.  There were three finalists, a young man who played the Rachmaninoff Third, another young man who played Liszt 1, and a young lady who played Chopin 1.  My mother and I both thought the young woman was by far the best, the most musical and lyrical player--but the prize went to the young man playing Rach 3 despite what we both considered a lackluster performance.

So apparently the corruption has been going on for a long time.

Google the story of how Cliburn won.

[king ubu]

Google the story of how Cliburn won.

Swami Vivekananda may have had a hand in it

[Mirror Image]

"Competitions are for horses not artists." - Bela Bartok

[king ubu]

"Competitions are for horses not artists." - Bela Bartok

Rocinante begs to differ.

[jochanaan]

Well, the only truly objective measures of musical performance are speed and strength--how fast and loud a player can play.  Everything else--tone, tempo choice, dynamic sensitivity, how closely to stick to the written notations--is a matter of interpretation and thus almost impossible to measure objectively.  Therefore musical competitions serve almost no artistic purpose.

[gutstrings]

Similar to the violin trade, where instruments are judged primarily by looks rather than tone. Every so often this is justified by claiming that tone is subjective-- it is not. Artistic expression of any art form can and should be weighted in favor of depth and meaning over mere superficial appearance.  We find consistency and universal truth in performers like Fritz Kreisler, Dinu Lipatti, Egon Petri, Arturo Toscanini... and even Artur Schnabel, who dared to record with mistakes *gasp!*  in order to keep the musical message alive. History will sort out the great from the merely good... it's just unfortunate how greatness is not always recognized until after the artist has passed.

[Madiel]

A result not going the way you thought it should is hardly evidence of corruption. Witness the wild variation in opinion every time we have a blind listening test here.