Canadian Chopin Competition

[johnlewisgrant]

Is anyone familiar with this competition? https://www.canadianchopinsociety.com/piano-competition/2019-competition.  It finished last week.  The winner of the senior level (I think that's about 16 to 27 years of age, approx.) apparently gets an automatic "in" to compete in the Warsaw Chopin competition (and $10,000).

Anyhow, apropos of the great discussion elsewhere at Pianostreet on who's "technically" the best, these days, I noticed that the adjudicators seemed to favor (in this all Chopin competition) technical proficiency over "musicality."  The ultimate winner Lingfei (Stephan) Xie, was not the performer to whom I would have given 1st prize.   But technically there were no issues AT ALL with his playing, and that seemed to be the Jury's main concern.

Interesting, that "Midi" was mentioned elsewhere here as a sort of definition of what absolute technical perfection, devoid of musicality, might look (sound) like.  The fact is that nowadays the standard is so high among the thousands of budding classical pianists out there that MIDI is no longer a benchmark.   I heard technique at the competition that was was very, very "MIDI-ish" in the sense that scales and arpeggios were often letter perfect.

"Letter perfect" does nothing for me, especially in Chopin.  Even MIDI (as pointed out in the thread here on "technique" can yield musical results, where modern software is utilized in performance).  In this instance, the Jury didn't award risk-taking, which I associate with musicality in live settings.   The recording-studio is an entirely different kettle of fish, of course. 

[lostinidlewonder]

Judging competitions is effectly strongly by personal opinions, you just have to see scoring result cards to see that it is often all over the place, I have seen some personally myself. When top players come together to compete judging them really feels quite random and unfortunately often it comes down to who played more correct notes or who played the most notes or who played pieces that certain judges personally liked more etc.

Now if everyone plays exactly the same pieces then we might have a more fair competition. I actually remember one competition I played in as a child where 60+ students played the same single piece!!!! ahha!! It was utterly boring some 2 hours of listening to the same piece... over... and over.... again. This however was probably the most fair comeptition I had ever been a part of since everyone was playing the same material. I just don't see competitions drawing in much audience interest if people are all playing the same piece but it seems to me a good way to control the variables.

Competitions suck and the results are laughable, might as well pick a name out of a hat or work out who knows more important people or who is more marketable for future concert sales. /end cynicalmode