Classical music can work on television – and here is the proof
The Chopin Competition shows there’s an appetite for a sector that we have neglected.
It was not until 2.30am in Warsaw, five long hours after the end of the final round, that the jury of the 18th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition delivered its verdict. This big moment normally comes every five years, but the competition originally scheduled for 2020 had, like almost everything else last year, been postponed due to Covid-19. No one was going to miss the announcement now, and even at such a late hour, the foyers of the Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall – spiritual home to this greatest of music contests – were abuzz, as were social-media channels across the world.
And the winner? Bruce (Xiaoyu) Liu, 24, was a name on many people’s lips, and his well-deserved victory made him the first Canadian to take first prize in the competition’s almost 100-year history. In addition to his €40,000 prize and gold medal, he is due a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon. Having dazzled during earlier stages of the competition, his Concerto in E minor, with the Warsaw Philharmonic under Andrzej Boreyko, held poetry and virtuosity in wonderful balance.
Hopes for new stars to be created here are always high, for the annals of the Chopin Competition read like a Who’s Who of pianism, and have featured more big-name prizewinners, including Maurizio Pollini, Martha Argerich and Krystian Zimerman, than any other musical contest. (One of the contestants at the first edition in 1927 was a young Dimitri Shostakovich, though he received only “honourable mention”.)
These days, the competition runs for a gruellingly intense three-week
period, with listening of up to eight hours a day. But the competition’s uniquely monographic nature helps to identify great pianists: if you can play Chopin well, that probably implies a mastery of Mozart and Rachmaninov too.
A fascinating new publication on the history of the competition is aptly titled The Chopin Games, for there is certainly something Olympian about it. Those 12 pianists who reached the final concerto stage had performed under the intense scrutiny of a distinguished 18-member jury, packed halls and over 100 hours of live coverage on Polish television and radio. This has long been a talkedabout national event, but it now also attracts millions of international followers via live-streaming.
As the organising body, the Fryderyk Chopin Institute has been ahead of much of the classical-music world in embracing social media, and its experience in the field would have been invaluable had the competition retreated to be shown only to online viewers. In the event, Warsaw
audiences were complemented by those watching around the globe, including large numbers in China on Weibo. At its peak, the Chopin Competition’s Youtube channel received 1,300 comments per minute, and the results presentation was viewed by over a million.
This comes at a time when classicalmusic television in the UK is treated with little regard, a Cinderella in an already impoverished cultural TV landscape. The Proms season aside, there are few classical concerts to be seen throughout the year, and classical-music documentaries are even more scarce. Of course, this was not always the case, but channel fragmentation and, perhaps more importantly, a lack of faith in the art-form has seen executives beat a retreat. Yet the Chopin Competition proves that there is an appetite for such things: with the highest standards and top-class presentation, classical music is very wide in its appeal.