Preparing for International Competition

[qpalqpal]

No, I am not posting to tell everyone that I am going to Warsaw. I have a rather more difficult question that will require a lengthy, meaningful answer

I am 13 years of age and I don't take the piano as a joke. I started lessons 3 weeks ago and I just finished learning Waltz Op. 34 No. 2. I want to seriously take a Chopin career and my goal is to partake in the Chopin International Piano Competition when I'm 17 or 22. For preparing for this, do I start as soon as now to get ready, or how do I prepare? I want to do what I can when I can. If I don't have a chance in succeeding, just put it out there with a reason. If I am capable, tell me some general guidelines. Should I go to a music school? Is it really THAT hard to get in the contest?

Give me as much information as possible, please!

[nyiregyhazi]

No, I am not posting to tell everyone that I am going to Warsaw. I have a rather more difficult question that will require a lengthy, meaningful answer

I am 13 years of age and I don't take the piano as a joke. I started lessons 3 weeks ago and I just finished learning Waltz Op. 34 No. 2. I want to seriously take a Chopin career and my goal is to partake in the Chopin International Piano Competition when I'm 17 or 22. For preparing for this, do I start as soon as now to get ready, or how do I prepare? I want to do what I can when I can. If I don't have a chance in succeeding, just put it out there with a reason. If I am capable, tell me some general guidelines. Should I go to a music school? Is it really THAT hard to get in the contest?

Give me as much information as possible, please!

Forget international piano competitions and just concentrate on learning how to play first.

[bachbrahmsschubert]

You can't get your Ph.D without first getting your Bachelor's.

You're looking too far ahead and this goal is a bit unreasonable. Competitors for the C.I. are the best young talent in the world and to think that it is "easy" is beyond naive. The sooner you understand that concert pianists are a rare breed (I'm talking EXTREMELY rare) and just focus on getting better while enjoying life, the opportunities will present themselves.

Besides, there's more to the piano than Chopin. Try broadening your repertoire as much as you can.

Best wishes,

[qpalqpal]

Okay, forgetting competition or not, what WOULD one do to prepare

[nyiregyhazi]

Okay, forgetting competition or not, what WOULD one do to prepare

Learn to play the piano. Sorry if this sounds sarcastic, but I'm bemused as to what you are hoping to hear. Get lessons from a good teacher and seek additional information from books. There are no magic beans that anyone on a forum can give you.

[lostinidlewonder]

There is really no repertoire path that we could suggest to you since this sort of thing requires a teacher who can sit with you at the piano. I also I think it is a great idea to have long term goals, these are wonderful to work towards, I do not think that you are looking too far ahead however of course you realize that you cannot make that long term goal in one step.

Expand your repertoire learn a lot more music, improve your sight reading so that you can learn music faster, develop your technique so you do not have to puzzle over passages for too long, develop a natural understanding of the musical language so you do not completely rely on the score to tell you exactly how to express a phrase etc etc. Also very important if you are planning to do competitions or performance, get stage experience. This means play at as many places as you possibly can, school, church, social clubs, busk in public etc etc. You need to learn how to play for an audience, do not let them effect your consistency of playing (many people find a difference in their playing at home vs in public).


To win competitions you need to have the correct mindset that you will win. If you have the mindset that you just want to enter for the "experience" then you will not do very well, you are also not using competitions in the correct way in my opinion. If you just want performing experience there are much much better places to gain that than from competitions. So if you want to win a competition you need to be better prepared than all of the other competitors, how you will do that and be confident that you are is individual for everyone. It may also be helpful to get to know the jury, sometimes you will find out that it is impossible to win because of the person judging the event. Secretive underhanded politics and favortism in musical judging is not uncommon. We just have to take a look at the last tied winners result at the Van Cliburn and speculate on the reason for that!

I think it is a fine goal to see yourself playing on stage in an international competition. This can push you to work hard, but remember that the hard work is hard work. Excite yourself envisaging winning a major international competition, if that inspires you so much so then use it to work consistently and harder than you normally would. Remember what you put in is what you will get out, if you prepare better and have more persistence than anyone else you can only win. Keep aiming for those stars!

[alessandro]

No, I am not posting to tell everyone that I am going to Warsaw. I have a rather more difficult question that will require a lengthy, meaningful answer

I am 13 years of age and I don't take the piano as a joke. I started lessons 3 weeks ago and I just finished learning Waltz Op. 34 No. 2. I want to seriously take a Chopin career and my goal is to partake in the Chopin International Piano Competition when I'm 17 or 22. For preparing for this, do I start as soon as now to get ready, or how do I prepare? I want to do what I can when I can. If I don't have a chance in succeeding, just put it out there with a reason. If I am capable, tell me some general guidelines. Should I go to a music school? Is it really THAT hard to get in the contest?

Give me as much information as possible, please!

Psycho-analysing...  Starting with "No, I'm not... (?!) ...will require a lengthy, meaningful answer. (?!)  Your dream can be short and non-sensical, no ?

Lostinidlewonder gave an elegant answer.   Hope it serves you.   I would like to add a few things.   There is probably some lost sociologist in me, but what is this thing with "winning" and with "success".   Isn't it so that a lot of young people are screaming out loud their dream of succes, of the top, of being Paris Hilton's best friend, winning America's Next Top Model Project Runway... ? As if there is no good life in a more clair-obscur region, in the more shady areas of the world (that doesn't mean that you have to live in underground bunker).   I really would like to demotivate you a lot, just to outbalance this topic, but I don't feel like it.   You are 13 years old and you can play Waltz Opus 34, congratulations, but is this waltz now 'really finished' ? And if not, when will it 'really' be finished ? And why choosing for this 'Chopin' competition (by the way, this competition is something like those World Championship Eating Hot-Dogs, 74 hot-dogs in 7 minutes chrono, but than with Etudes, Mazurka's and the whole Chopin menu) ; this definitely doesn't sound like a good competition to start with.   You ask "Do I start as soon as now to get ready ?!" Are you somewhat lazy ? Or what did you expect ? Starting on April 2nd 2012, does that sound good to you ? "Should you go to music school ?", well, I think you could write history in not doing so and being admitted to an 'international' contest.   No, frankly, I would like to advise you warmly to have at least a few lessons before you subscribe for such a competition.   Have somebody ever told you what the path of a 'famous' pianist looks like ? You can have a chance in succeeding, but there is no way to reach those "stars" if you are not enough standing on the ground, you know what I mean ?, in order to bounce.   All the rest is floating in space, which can also be interesting, but not much chance that you "hit"...  I too will join the surf on the positive wave and wish you all the best, but now, please go back to the piano, eat healthy, have enough sleep, and I don't know why, but I think that that Waltz Opus 34 is not 'finished' enough yet.
Kindly.

[mysterychord]

We need an update!!! How’s he/she doing? Did he go to Chopin Competition? Is he still playing piano???

[jaquet]

yes i want to know if they went to the competition. By the last post im gonna guess no, but with 6 years of practice you can do anything!

[yqxpiano]

Necropost, but based on their last post in 2015, they took a year long piano hiatus in 2014, and was learning Bach’s 7th invention. I don’t think they were able to go to the Chopin competition :'(
 They had completed these works as of august 2013:
Glinka:

• Kamarinskya
• Ruslan and Ludmilla

borodin:

• Symphony 2
• In the Steppes of Central Asia

Mussorgsky:

• Pictures at an Exhibition

Balakirev:

• Islamey

Rimsky-Korsakov:

• Scherzade

Doesn’t seem like they went to Chopin competition. With the year long hiatus in 2014. Who knows though, maybe they really practiced from 2015 onwards and did go. Although I don’t think there was anybody in Chopin 2020 that would’ve been him. Or perhaps he prepared in the months from his January 2015 post and April 2015 (date of 2015 Chopin Competition) and went! A stretch though. I don’t think you could get from invention 7 to Chopin competition in a few months.
There’s a good chance he’s still playing piano, but he probably will not enter this forum again.
Some of his last posts on the forum (in 2013) were about high school dances. Fun.
Also, the way the forum does lists is very weird to me. It’s like html, but not quite. It’s not markdown either. Well, I think this forum is so old markdown wasn’t really standard yet.
What do you guys think?