July 2007

You Won't Find This Anywhere Else

July 31, 2007 10:01

I'll post the identity of the artist and some thoughts next week. In the meantime, your own comments and guesses are encouraged.

(Bonus points if you can figure out what's so special about this.)

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Fast-Fingered, Light-Fingered

July 17, 2007 08:47

I'm sure this qualifies as one of the most bizarre reasons for disqualification from a music competition:

Georgian pianist Shorena Tsintsabadze had reached the semifinals of the Sendai International Music Competition; as a result, she was scheduled to play Ravel's Concerto in G with the Sendai Philharmonic on June 18th. Two days before that, and mere hours before the semifinals were set to begin, however, she allegedly pilfered about ¥21000 (US$170) in goods from a local store and was caught by police.

Competition organizers were understandably disturbed when informed of the news and disqualified her from further participation in the competition. (All mention of Tsintsabadze has since been deleted from the competition's website.)

“ … first you become a celebrity, then you get away with all manner of crime. Not the other way around. ”
Now, I must admit I was at first quite surprised at the severity of the reaction; whatever deficiencies present in her character should not have anything to do with how well she plays Ravel. But then again, I suppose it's rather difficult to participate in a music competition when one has been detained by police.

One has to wonder, however, why she could not simply have waited until after the finalists had been announced. Had she advanced, the minimum ¥600000 (US$4900) sixth prize would have easily covered the cost of the stolen goods.

Tsintsabadze appears to have forgotten one cardinal rule: first you become a celebrity, then you get away with all manner of crime. Not the other way around. Scott Peterson's crucial misstep was becoming a celebrity after, and not before, he murdered his pregnant wife. (That, and hiring Mark Geragos as his attorney, all but condemned him. His execution is expected in the year 2042.)

Unfortunately for Tsintsabadze, of achieving stardom or getting away with crime, neither now appears likely for her.

Trivia

Nikolai Rubinstein was a Russian pianist; Leopold Auer was a Hungarian violinist. Each was quite accomplished in his own right, but what notability do the two have in common? (For bonus points: who replaced each?)

Quote of the week

"There is much to be improved. In particular—the way the musicians are admitted to the contest. I know there were some brilliant violinists who were not chosen after the preliminary auditions."

—Zakhar Bron, on the Tchaikovsky competition

All I want for my birthday...

The New York Times has an interesting piece about Steinway's only two-keyboard piano, including a video demonstration featuring some of the Goldberg variations.

As the video demonstrates, the second keyboard makes it possible to play some of the variations according to the score (a 2 Clav.). But it also makes possible intervals as large as two octaves, which mostly eliminates the need for ingenuities like this:

syndicated from Don't Shoot the Pianist

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Postlude to the Tchaikovsky

July 3, 2007 09:02

So, Mayuko Kamio won the Tchaikovsky competition's violin section, and nobody I know seems terribly surprised.

And it's not because she played miles ahead of her competition, although I happen to think she played exceptionally well. No, it's more of the usual: Kamio's teacher is the eminent Zakhar Bron, who happened to be on the jury. Toyota, a Japanese company, is the competition's main sponsor. Of course Kamio "won". If you looked at YouTube, you'd think Kamio was the most unpopular winner in the competition's history.

“ Kamio has the potential to become the most successful Tchaikovsky winner—in any discipline—since Ilya Kaler … and yet we’re still talking about Zakhar Bron. ”
Now, aside from the fact that I think Toyota has about as much influence on the jury as my choice of underpants, I find this extremely unfortunate. Kamio has the potential to become the most successful Tchaikovsky winner—in any discipline—since Ilya Kaler completed his sweep of the Paganini, Sibelius and Tchaikovsky competitions in 1986, a feat that has yet to be equalled. And yet we're still talking about Zakhar Bron.

Not that anybody could be faulted for dwelling on Bron's membership in the jury. Even before the competition, a Russian classical music forum held a discussion about the impartiality of the violin jury. "As long as [Oleg] Krysa and Bron sit on the jury," declared one opinion, "there will be no objectivity."

And most competition watchers would be forgiven for being suspicious from the beginning. Many previous Tchaikovsky competitions did not pass without some major controversy. Piano jury chairman Nikolai Petrov was even more blunt in an interview before the competition: "The competition has lost ninety percent of its renown because of the shameful, fraudulent, biased and unfair behaviour … of jury members at earlier competitions."

It's ironic, really, considering that the Tchaikovsky competition was started at the height of the Cold War to demonstrate Soviet cultural superiority. The story is moderately well known in music circles: Soviet plans were derailed by a Texan by the name of Van Cliburn, and the judges were compelled to ask Premier Nikita Khrushchev for permission to award the first prize to an American. "Is he the best?" replied Khruschev, according to legend, "Then give him the prize!"

(Cliburn returned home as a national hero, and the jury never made that mistake again.)

Fast forward several decades, and the Soviets have fallen. Suspicion about politics around the Tchaikovsky competition, however, is just as prevalent as suspicion about steroids, blood doping, and human growth hormone at the Tour de France: nearly all the winners are presumed guilty until the lab results show otherwise, and even then that doesn't clear things up completely. As for "innocent", there is no such thing anymore: there is only "guilty" and "couldn't catch them".

The thing that differentiates the Tchaikovsky competition from the Tour de France, however, is that cheating at a cycling competition, by its very nature, precludes one from being the best cyclist. But one can still be the best violinist even if one has a teacher on the jury. It's not as if Kamio was the only competitor receiving instruction from a jury member, either. Thirteen competitors, or over a third of the field, listed a teacher on the jury in the competition programme. Of those thirteen, seven were eliminated in the first cut.

I don't claim that Kamio was the best. I don't claim she wasn't, either; as just about everybody knows, I have hardly the expertise to make such bold statements. All I know is that I enjoyed Kamio's performance to the point of loving it.

Certainly, things could be better. The Tchaikovsky competition could be more like the one named for the Tchaikovsky's most famous winner: in 2005, when seven of Yoheved Kaplinsky's students were selected to be among the thirty-five participants in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Kaplinsky asked to be relieved of her position as a competition juror, saying that it would be in the competition's best interests.

But the world has seen plenty of conspiracy theories already. Apollo didn't land on the moon. The World Trade Center fell due to a controlled demolition. And, of course, the Jews have been planning to take over the world seemingly forever.

Conspiracy theories are unbelievably useful. They let us believe pretty much anything we want to believe. I'm just not sure we need any more of them.

"A catastrophically bad instrument"

Speaking of conspiracy theorists, they'll love this. According to the Moscow Times, Artiom Shishkov, the violin section's lone Belarussian contestant and a clear audience favourite, was eliminated in the final cut not for lack of talent: "He played very well," said jury chairman Vladimir Spivakov, "but on a catastrophically bad instrument. So we simply couldn't advance him."

The jury sent a strong rebuke to Belarussian president Alexander Lukashenko in the form of a letter suggesting that his government find Shishkov a violin more appropriate for his musical talent.

Early morning deliberations

Whereas the violin, cello, and vocal juries returned their verdicts relatively quickly on Friday evening, the piano jury engaged in a heated debate lasting into early Saturday morning. The jury took the stage at one o'clock in the morning local time only to announce that the first prize was not being awarded this year. The second prize went to Miroslav Kultyshev of Russia.

A curiosity...

Can someone tell me what Kamio does right about the eight-minute mark of the third movement of the Tchaikovsky here? I looked at the score and I can't find her little flourish, so if that's what I think it is, it seems fairly audacious to do it in international competition, and at the Tchaikovsky of all places. (Which, incidentally, I find quite laudable. Musicians should play competitions like they play concerts.)

XIV competition rescheduled, again

There's some news to report about the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition already. It'll now take place in 2010 again as originally scheduled. The date had been moved to 2011 after the XIII competition was postponed to 2007 due to planned, but ultimately cancelled, renovations to the Moscow Conservatory; however, it's now been moved back due to a possible conflict with the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition, which the Tchaikovsky is contractually obligated to avoid and which recently announced that it would no longer have a fallow year.

Which brings up an interesting question. Up until 2006, the Queen Elisabeth followed a schedule of piano, vocal, violin, fallow year, with the Tchaikovsky competition being held in the fallow years. If the fallow year is eliminated, how is the Tchaikovsky competition possibly going to avoid a conflict? (One could argue that there was already a conflict of sorts this year, with the Queen Elisabeth piano contest ending less than two weeks before the start of the Tchaikovsky competition.)

syndicated from Don't Shoot the Pianist

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More entries: August 2007 • June 2007

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