Friday, August 18, 2006

piano competitions

Are they a good thing?

""Some critics say you can't judge one person's art as better than another person's art, but of course you can," Pollei says. "Competitions encourage pianists to strive for excellence, and without them we wouldn't have great pianists like Manny Ax or Krystin Zimerman. They wouldn't have had careers. Besides, people love piano competitions, and there's evidence they're even beginning to replace piano recitals.""

I think that assessment isn't quite right. I hope not anyways.

Link

2 comments:

Shablagoo! said...

Michelangeli didn't win many of the first competitions he entered in the early stages of his career and he was one of the very greatest technicians/pianists/enbalmer (take your pick) of the 20th Century.

Pogorelich famously failed to get past of the 3rd round of the Chopin competition. Though you have to ask in his example, where the hell is he nowadays?

The Well Tempered Blog said...

Right.

It's often not the "winner" who takes whome the real prize.