COMPETITIVE SPIRIT
Clare Stevens takes a look at how international music competitions have adapted to the challenges of Covid and, furthermore, created new ways of operating for the future
‘We really didn’t see it coming,’ reflects Rob Hilberink, director of the Utrecht-based Liszt Piano Competition. He is talking about the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, which stopped the 12th edition of his competition in its tracks just as the finalists were about to arrive in the city. ‘Even when we were told that the Netherlands was shutting down all public events for a fortnight, we thought that would be all it would take to avert the crisis.’
Within a week, the organisers had rescheduled to the end of June 2020, but in May they were forced to announce another postponement until the autumn, and in September the decision was taken to cancel the 2020 competition altogether: ‘Having worked on numerous alternative scenarios, we faced the reality that it was impossible to host an international event at this time, with the ongoing travel restrictions and unpredictable local situation.’
Instead, Hilberink and his colleagues set up an online audience award, using the selection videos made by the 14 finalists. Tamta Magradze from Georgia emerged as the winner, securing a large majority of the votes cast by more than 6,000 people from 71 countries.
This is a story that played out with many variations across the world over the next 18 months, as competition organisers worked out how best they could serve their competitors and audiences in these extraordinary times. Competitors in Armenia’s Khachaturian Violin Competition, for example, were invited to submit recordings of themselves via a specially created app, with the competition guidelines including a list of recommended smartphones and advice on making sure they were fully charged and had enough storage capacity to cope. For third-round performances of the Khachaturian Concerto they were supplied with different versions of the orchestral accompaniment, enabling them to choose their preferred tempos and to watch the conductor on screen.
The Northern Ireland International Organ Competition (NIIOC) had been looking forward to hosting its tenth edition in Armagh in August 2020, but instead asked finalists to choose an instrument in their home city and record a recital programme in as close as possible to concert conditions for consideration by the jury. They were all invited to log in to a livestreamed presentation ceremony in early December; the competition was won by Laura Schlappa from Cuxhaven, Germany, and another prize-winner, Ilaria
Centorrino from Messina, Italy, tweeted delightedly about the bizarre experience of being awarded the Dame Gillian Weir Medal for her performance of a transcription of
Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue on the name of BACH while watching from her bedroom.
NIIOC 2020 jury chair David Titterington paid tribute to the competition’s chairman, Richard Yarr, for creating ‘a digital platform which enabled the competition to go ahead without in any way compromising the quality or integrity of the performances’.
Six months later, Titterington adopted a similar formula for the 31st edition of the St Albans International Organ Competition, of which he is artistic director, creating an online-only interpretation competition with compulsory repertoire including a commissioned piece, Gloria cum jubilo by Roxanna Panufnik. Recital programmes by 12 candidates recorded in their home venues were shown on a big screen in St Albans Cathedral over three evenings in early July 2021, as well as being streamed online. The livestreamed awards announcement took place in the cathedral a week later, with three equal prizes for the best overall performances awarded to Mitchell Miller from the US, Quentin du Verdier from France and Mona Rozdestvenskyte from Russia, playing on an organ in Detmold, Germany.
But by October 2021 the triennial Canadian International Organ Competition, delayed by a year, was able to invite ten semifinalists to perform in person at La Maison Symphonique, Montréal; it was won by
Aaron Tan from Canada/the Philippines, with second prize going to the UK’S Ben Bloor, third prize shared between players from Canada and the US and the audience prize going to Anastasia Stahl from Russia.
‘Everything really seemed to get going again in the summer of 2021, as international travel began to open up,’ says Florian Riem, secretary general of the World Federation of International Music Competitions (WFIMC). ‘September and October were completely crazy, with several events happening at the same time, especially piano competitions.’
These included the Leeds International Piano Competition: Alim Beisembayev from Kazakhstan won its Waterman Gold Medal, as well as the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society Award for Contemporary Music and the Audience Prize sponsored by Medici
TV, which broadcast the event. Coverage spanned the first round of performances by 63 competitors in 17 locations around the world as well as the in-person second round, semi-finals and grand final in Leeds.
It was two o’clock in the morning at the National Philharmonic Hall in Warsaw
Hearing an artist live and livestreamed are two different experiences
when competition director Artur Szklener finally announced the winners of the 18th International Fryderyk Chopin Competition to more than 100 waiting journalists and another 100 fans patiently waiting outside. The first prize and Gold Medal 2021 went to the Canadian Bruce Liu, who had provided a thrilling conclusion to a competition livestreamed for a month and watched by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. There were record numbers of 500 applications, 164 performers in the preliminary rounds, 87 in the main competition and 12 finalists.
Florian Riem attended both the Leeds and the Chopin competitions, sitting immediately behind the jury, but also caught up with the livestreams afterwards, and was struck by the differences between the two listening experiences. ‘In both places you have huge halls where the jury sits at the back on the balcony and the artist sits far away on stage in the middle of the orchestra,’ he says.
‘What you hear is so completely different that you really wonder if you are listening to the same competition. The recording quality is excellent – they are using only the best equipment and the technicians try to make it even better – so what you hear when you watch on screen is of a fabulous quality; but if you are actually in the hall, the distance, the acoustics, noises such as people coughing or turning pages in their programmes, can be a huge distraction.
‘For the livestream they can filter that out. Some jury members told me they would listen to the livestream too – just to make sure – but even that is tricky because then you get two impressions of the same performance.’
Riem says he and his colleagues have been thinking a lot about how these contrasting impressions affect the artistic judgments made about competition performances. Filming is clearly here to stay, and the competitors need to get used to the intrusive presence of cameras and microphones and try to block out the additional pressure of knowing how many people may be watching, but the ideal is still for performers and jurors to be in the same space for the final rounds.
Riem’s predecessor at WFIMC, Benjamin Woodroffe, who is also a former executive director of the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, set up the Global Foundation for the Performing Arts (GFPA) in 2019 with the aim of supporting young performers, particularly in classical music and ballet, through ‘education, mentorship, collaboration and constructive competition’, which includes helping them to choose and prepare for the right competition to suit their particular stage of development. In the wake of the pandemic, he believes this is more important than ever. ‘Competitions in every discipline have seen huge numbers of applications, because young musicians are desperate to have something to focus on and to be heard by agents and by the public,’ he says. ‘I think now they can plan with confidence that most events will take place, albeit perhaps in a hybrid form, with more of the early rounds online.’
Woodroffe adds that the pandemic has underlined the fact that there is no longer a ‘one-size fits all’ model. ‘Each competition should reflect and adapt to its own context – artistic and geographic – to remain relevant and to achieve its artistic vision,’ he reasons. ‘And now it is easier than ever to share that vision with the world.’