Another question is how many "former professionals" would even want to compete in an amateur competition? It might even be considered a negative. It's not like the prizes are huge or anything.

The first prize in the Cliburn amateur competition is $2,000. You do get to have a nice performing experience on a good piano, but that's about it. You can put the glory on your resume and the trophy on your mantel, but you can't eat them.

I mean, what's really at stake here?

I'm surprised that any of them would want to do it, but the fact is, quite a few do.
What's at stake for them? Who knows......but for at least one of them in particular, it seems genuinely to be just that he wanted to get back into performing and into a music scene, but without immersing himself so totally as in the past.

What makes me think so? Because of how extraordinarily and completely gracious he was when he DIDN'T win.

P.S. Please don't ask me which one this is, because if I say, I'll be insulting the others.

Why worse, and in what way? If you are suggesting that the standards are higher because of the inclusion of part-time or former professionals, and that this is a good thing, why not open it up to all professionals (and students who are aspiring to be professionals), and have even better standards? It would be the logical thing to do, if that's the reasoning.

If they are really trying to attract real amateurs, I'd think that the inclusion of faux amateurs tends to keep a certain number of real amateurs from even entering in the first place. It certainly would discourage me, if I were thinking about entering. (But then, if I were to enter, Ronald Steinway might say that I should be eliminated because I had some college-level music education. )

By the way, speaking of discouragement - using caps for emphasis is not the best way to do it. In internet forum-speak, it's called "shouting" and is frowned on. There are bold and italic buttons you can use to punch up your posts, instead.

Well taken. As I said earlier, my views are biased by the fact that some of what we might call the 'quasi-amateurs' have become my friends. Plus, as I think has been evident from all my posts on this, my views are ambivalent, and perhaps not consistent or coherent.

I guess my best answer is (repeating what I said earlier) that it's difficult if not impossible to know where to draw the line, and that I personally don't have much problem with where some of the competitions draw it.
I do have a growing problem with where others do it (in some instances this has represented an evolution in the wrong direction), and I won't enter them any more unless they tighten their guidelines.



Again, well taken -- but I think that the last line there (despite being punctuated with a ) seriously illustrates what I just said up there: It's very very hard to draw the line. I can even imagine that some people might argue that I'm not a "real amateur," in various ways, such as that I've given many recitals over the years.


I suppose I have to say "well taken" yet again, and as you can see, in this post I've followed what you're saying. I just came here a few days ago, and my main recent internet forum happened to have been one that didn't have italics or bold, so the only way to emphasize was with caps -- and I guess that became a habit. I didn't think my use of caps here was excessive, but if it bothers people, I'll stop and just do it as you said.

Thanks for the post, and as you can see, I try to take any serious input equally seriously.

Mark and I have been to many of these amateur competitions together, and we probably have seen many sides of the competitions so far. Obviously, there are things we rather not say in a public forum. But there is one thing I can say that I've seen many discouraged, burned-out amateurs after some competitions. They felt out of place and not worthy to a point that some nearly quit playing piano. Many already stopped entering these amateur competitions.

I felt that way after one particular recent competition (won't say which one, except that it wasn't by any means the Chopin competition in Warsaw) and won't enter it again unless they significantly tighten their guidelines. (It looks like they're doing so but it might not be enough.)

To me the issue was that there was such an amount of younger conservatory types that it changed the atmosphere of the event (and of the judging) to a conservatory-student thing -- which I think is quite different than simply that the level was "raised," which I'm not sure it was. The latter hasn't bothered me much, but this did. It doesn't just raise the bar; it alters what gets expected and looked for.

All "IMO" of course.....

These filters may eliminate most of faux amateurs:

1. Make a list of conservatories whose graduates cannot compete in amateur level competitions, for example Curtis, Juilliard, Moscow Conservatory, etc. All State University and colleges as well as unknown private music schools (small names) are OK to compete. In general, State Universities music schools do not produce concert pianist level graduates. Graduates from state colleges are usually just normal people who love to play piano, yet big names graduates are totally different level of people, they are professional artist level.

2. Anybody who had competed in world class piano competitions such real Van Cliburn, Sydney, Chopin, Lizt, etc should not be allowed to join any amateur competition.

3. Ex-professional pianists who had done extensive performances must not join too. Real amateur pianists will very unlikely to have more than 3 concertos in their repertoire. Therefore, people who have 12 concertos in their repertoire and had performed with big well known orchestra should be considered a professional.

4. Anybody with Master Degree in Piano performance, regardless from which school he or she graduated, should not be allowed to compete in amateur piano competition.

Ok that is it.... I think the above criteria will effectively reduce the possibility faux amateur to be able to join amateur piano competition.

Maybe showing how hard or impossible it is to really do the job on that.... Despite that elaborate set of restrictions, your system wouldn't take care of what to me is the main problem: the very young contestants.

And I don't agree about how you draw such a line between the major conservatories and those other places.

The thing is, there are so many possible issues. And different people will differ on which ones matter and which are most important.

I know that you could easily say "OK, I'll add that you have to be at least 30." (or whatever)

But some next person could come along and point out something else that you didn't cover.
And so on, and so on.

If you came up with criteria that screened out all the people that anybody might reasonably think was a ringer, you'd be left with almost nothing.

It's just hard -- and it's up to each competition to try to be a meaningful thing on its own terms.
I think they've been succeeding in differing and fluctuating degrees.