Tuesday, August 15, 2006

The Politics of Piano Competitions

An interesting dust-up is unfolding around the Villa-Lobos International Piano Competition :

"This is to be a political selection, with one from each country," Rechtman quotes Neschling as telling him at a closed-door meeting in April just before he was fired. "Let's select three Chinese, but we must make sure there are more Brazilians than Chinese. After all, this is a Brazilian competition."


One often hears complaints about the various "politics" of compettitions, but I think this enters into a whole new realm. No? Read the rest here.

There also a post from Rechtman explaining the selections. You find it here.

2 comments:

Jessica said...

Not that new, surely? Scroll back 40-odd years, for 'Chinese' read 'American' and for 'Brazilian' read 'Russian', then lie back and think of Tchaikovsky......

The Well Tempered Blog said...

Doh ! How could that have escaped me. .