It seems impossible these days to avoid getting bound up in something or other to do with violin competitions. One would be hard-pressed to fling a brick anywhere in Western Europe and not have it ricochet off a competitor's BAM case and fall to the ground inert and a bit embarrassed. In the last couple of weeks, I've been barraged with a series of first-round results, been confronted with victory announcements, been encumbered with adjudicator-related conspiracy theories, and have even been induced (with scarcely any resistance on my part) to attend the finals of the Britten Competition, where I was treated to three performances on the trot of said composer's violin concerto and then lulled to sleep by Elgar's effort at the form. (I should mention that Elgar's music rather than the performer's gusto were to blame for my nap; I've never much cared for the composer's works and, much to the horror of certain residents of my adopted country, have found most of them (the compositions) to be exceedingly soporofic.)
Needless to say, I'm not a fan of competitions, and consider them a blight on the musical landscape. A necessary blight, perhaps, but a blight nonetheless. I say necessary because it's awesomely difficult -- now perhaps more than ever -- to get a break in the classical music world, and having "winner of the 2007 Tchaikovsky Competition" pinned to one's back gives the odds-makers a bit of cud to chew. My trouble with competitions is one of substance rather than standards. Young violinists' technical prowess is at an all-time high, and even the last-place finisher in any competition can whip off Paganini's 24 with hardly a hitch. What you seldom come across, however, is a personality underpinning the technique. I've listened to at least fifty competitors this month alone, and of that number I'd like to hear only two or three of them again. Bear in mind that I say this as a listener, not a judge. While I usually find myself agreeing with judges' decisions re. competition play, none of the two or three violinists I favoured on a stylistic basis ended up winning their respective competitions. They all placed in the top-four -- a couple in the top-two -- but none ended the evening by sipping Champagne from a silver-plated trophy.
There are people in my acquaintance who take great pleasure in decrying what they see as the paltry status of emotion in contemporary musicianship. They speak with hand-sweeping, nostril-twitching passion, and always cap their argument by saying that "[insert famous late-19th-, early-20th-century violinist's name here] would never win a competition today, but wouldn't you rather hear him play the Mendelssohn concerto?" The pontification is a beautiful spectacle to behold, really, but it's completely bogus. Of course Georges Enescu wouldn't win the Menuhin competition today -- and neither, for that matter, would Menuhin -- but how would Ray Chen (who did win this year's Menuhin competition -- congrats, Ray!) fare in front of a 1918 audience? And of course I'd love to hear a member of the violin pantheon unpack the Mendelssohn VC, but wouldn't it also be something to hear Gil Shaham play the same. Violin playing has grown more precise over the course of the last century, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's become less musical. Competitions typically inspire technique-minded performances, which is why I don't like them, but it's worth remembering that precision and passion are not mutually exclusive terms. After all, Roby Lakatos won the Bartok Conservatory first prize for violin in 1984, and he seems to have done alright.
(Addendum: If I haven't entirely put you off competitions, and you'd like to have a listen to this year's Menuhin gauntlet, you can do so by clicking here.)
