V.com weekend vote: Have you ever won, or lost, a competition?

June 7, 2025 at 09:35 PM · In my one and only competition, in 8th grade, I won and the prize was a small scholarship to Blue Lake. There was no option for "never lost" so for the second poll I chose "never entered". I did perform in "Solo and Ensemble" several times but was never selected for the state level so I suppose you could say I "lost" all those.

June 8, 2025 at 03:12 AM · I participated in a few comps as a younger student, mostly in larger fields (eg 20+). The best I did was 3rd and 5th. I didn’t take them particularly seriously (I was more interested in sport back then), and there were some seriously good players. This didn’t discourage me from continuing to learn the violin and getting better, but perhaps it did give me a dose of relativism about where my standard was and what I’d need to do to accelerate my progress.

I did lift my game a bit while still at school, and ended up being a very decent player. But by then, miles off the technique of budding pros.

It really clicked for me halfway through college (studying a non music degree). I then went back and re-engineered my technique (esp bowing arm), and entered a few higher level comps, and getting better results, including winning a couple of concerto comps. These still weren’t particularly high level, but quite competitive.

Overall, they do serve a good purpose for giving one a sense of comparative ability, and a real focus for getting better and being more honest with oneself about weaknesses and opportunities for improvement.

But I’d imagine at the higher levels, things get very serious and could be a source of great angst. You’d have to enter them with a degree of zen…(easier said than done!)

I do remember one phrase from a judge (in the written report), for a comp I won (doing the Bruch), which said - amongst some very lovely praise - “…for a small-scaled violinist”. I’ve related that story with humour for many years since. It was kind of true I guess, but it does tend to diminish the whole person and what they bring musically to any given situation!

June 8, 2025 at 01:32 PM · Ha! I think the only violin competition I'd have a chance of winning would be for the oldest beginning violin student (62) who went on to become a first violinist in a regional orchestra. And, I might very well lose that one too!!

June 8, 2025 at 07:11 PM · I won the Peel music festival on April 25, 2025 in my category. I have also won an annual music competition held by my music academy, Arcadia Academy of Music in 2023 and 2024. I also participated in the Burlington Symphony Young Artists competition, in which I was not selected as one of the winners.

June 9, 2025 at 02:43 PM · I've only ever entered one, omis classical guitar competition, I came last, still cannot work out why there were a lot worse than me, just ignore it and get on with it....

June 9, 2025 at 03:39 PM · I both lost and then won my college concerto competition. I also won the Virginia Music Teachers Association competition (college division) when I was an undergrad. It's funny because I've never been a good judge of how I sound as compared to other players everyone sounds like Nathan Milstein or Ida Haendel when I hear them through the wall so I didn't expect to win. I remember one young lady whipping through the last movement of Lalo like it was Twinkle and a Bassist who was playing Dragonetti flawlessly people were basically conceding that he was going to win. The competition was being held at my old high-school so familiar surroundings may have helped but I was still too shy to warm up in the shared space so I found a stairwell to quietly play a few notes in private.

I remember playing Khachaturian VC Mvt. 1, Franck Sonata Mvt. II, I want to say Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata Mvt 1 and possibly Bach or LeClair. The performance space was the orchestra classroom not an auditorium so the judges were literally a few feet away from me, think Flashdance. I remember not being particularly nervous but there was a moment where my pianist and I got out of synch during the Kachaturian but we recovered quickly. My teacher found this pianist to accompany everyone from our studio like, she played ALL of our orchestral reductions and sonatas and I was playing Franck and Kreutzer just myself!

The experience was positive and it helped me grow but then there was the pressure on myself to perform at peak levels all the time which is not humanly possible at least for me. That's a story for another time.

-M

June 9, 2025 at 09:51 PM · I entered but did not win a college concerto competition as a pianist.

The only real opportunity I've had to enter a competition as a string player was when I went back to school for my LL.M degree in 2021-22 and thus became eligible for the university concerto competition. I didn't enter because I was still limiting my practice time several months after getting rear-ended on a freeway offramp and suffering a whiplash injury.