My friend emailed me a page from the NY times on piano competitions, but it’s all relevant to guitar competitions. I mean it’s pretty obvious, but people forget how it’s so very hard to become well known unless you’ve won a few of these. These guys who win are a particular type of player – they’re the standard player who avoids controversial interpretation and plays it safe. There’s no daring, and the interesting players who risk it all are never those who win.
Look at Bozhanov…
Yeah I know huh.
Now look at the comments.
God damned competition mafia. Back in the golden age of guitar this stuff wasn’t so common, you could get gigs by simply being heard, and being good. The bitch of it is that playing it safe, being nice and getting a brown nose pays off.
The other link is this one, which is kinda entertaining.
Hi Sean,
you wrote: “These guys who win are a particular type of player – they’re the standard player who avoids controversial interpretation and plays it safe. There’s no daring, and the interesting players who risk it all are never those who win.”
You’re basically suggesting that jurors are stale zombies who will not choose the real musicians, but the robot-players instead.
I don’t know if this is true.
Just have a look at the 2011 Barrios www competition, where the 20 semifinalists have been announced: http://www.barriosworldwide.com/2011/en/
Check out some of the semifinalists interpretations of Estudio de Concierto.
You’ll be glad to see that Laura Klemke made it to the semifinals. Her interpretation of Estudio de Concierto is sheer musical mastery. A truly fantastic daring musical performance!!
And of course she made it to the semifinals. How can one not love her performance? Jurors are humans too, not zombies.
😉
Hey,
Yeah I mean of course in this post, I was exaggerating a little. But I do think that, in general, the more controversial (being so usually through colour/rubato – these seem to be taboos at the hint of excess) players are inevitably neglected in competitions. I’m trying to listen to Ms. Klemke’s interpretation but unfortunately the washing machine is pretty loud and I can’t hear it :-/ I’ll listen to it later 🙂
brb off to drink some hot chocolate
Thanks for your links and stuff 😉
Sean