Dear BoliverAllmon...
I'm sorry, my choice of words wasn't maybe the best one.
1° On the one hand you have to play, if you reach the final a totally new work. It's a work for piano and orchestra, where the piano plays the main role. Since it's a contemporary piece, maybe ground-breaking, hopefully full of originality (often criticised cause often misunderstood in all its modernity), it's difficult to categorise it. But say it's between 10 and 20 minutes long, again depending on the speed of the interpretation of each contestant. The piece is already written and chosen, again in a contest for composers. Things that are taken into consideration for the selection of this new work are the main role of the piano and its originality. Nobody has seen the score at this time except the people that have selected the piece. It's a very nice thing to watch and in my eyes the reason for putting this world-premiere into the competition is that you can see what kind of musician the competitor is. Of course you have to be a good score reader, I think, to read and study this type of thing in a week (one rehearsal with orchestra is programmed for every contestant) but what's really fascinating is the amount of interpretation you can put into a 'dead' score. You can hear musicality for the one contestor, originality in the other, or prudence, flamboyance etcetera...
2° And on the other hand you have, again if you reach the final, to play a concerto. Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Chopin... Whatever you like. I cite the most popular ones, the ones that are regularly chosen for their virtuosity or their beauty. So it's not excluded that the audience will hear three times a Rachmaninoffconcerto and two times a Prokofiev... during the final. But again, that's not necessarily boring cause it gives maybe a chance to hear different types of interpretation, musicality etc..;
Kindly
Topic: Top Piano Competitions