Well, P*S played in the Richmond Symphony concerto competition about a week ago. Outside of the National Symphony competition, which is only open to northern Virginians, this is the big one in our state.

As a preface, last October P*S participated in a classical sonata competition sponsored by the VCU piano department in Richmond. I posted a video of that one. It was won by a young lady from the DC area who has already been a finalist in major international competitions.

This is her: Gina Bachauer finalist and MTNA winner

What a wonderful young pianist to see and hear. In that event, P*S finished third, behind her and another young lady on the Juilliard track who had already won the Richmond Symphony competition two years ago. (You're allowed to play again, just not in two consecutive years).

Well, when we get to the concert hall for the concerto competition P*S goes off to the holding area / practice rooms to wait his turn (he's the last to play). He sits there and reads a book. Me, I chat with the organizers ... and I pace like a caged tiger. It's my job.

So, I go and grab a program. There on the list .... the same two girls. Damn!

Hou goes first, with Prokofiev #1. Then someone plays Tchaikovsky #1. The other one of the phenom duo plays Beethoven #3. I listened to these and to the remaining other players through the closed auditorium door. Hou seemed to knock the Prokofiev dead. What a talent. I'm thinking Anthony needs to treat this whole event as just a little bit of seasoning.

For Anthony's performance of the Grieg, I steel myself to go upstairs to listen among the audience (which includes all of the other performers by this time). I'm sure I cringed at every slight slip, because I naturally recognized every one of them. But when he was done (and I was breathing again) I realized that he had really played very well for a first public performance. [brag mode on] His cadenza was awesome. [brag mode off]

The winners were announced twenty minutes later. Honorable mention .... the Beethoven. Second place ..... Anthony. Wait a minute. Really! Holy cow. First place ... Hou. He came out of this with his skin intact.

And he has made some friends. The Symphony league usually invites the 2nd place finisher to perform at one of their spring fundraising events, and they would like him to try again next year.

Alas, I didn't record the performance.

This wasn't a family recital, so sitting there with my camcorder would have seemed a bit out of place. I was silly though, not to have brought my little Zoom.

OK, story over. Moral of the story ....

If you have any students who are interested in events of this sort, give it a go. They offer a great opportunity to see and hear the best players in the area. They allow you and your students to network in the larger community. And there are potentially large musical benefits to the student of preparing and performing a major work with you as the second piano. Lastly, who knows, they might win! The chance to play with a decent orchestra is worth the price of admission.

Congrats! I have a student who just made it to the second round of a competition that will take place this Saturday. First round was by CD. I'm just pleased he made it this far. If he comes back with anything from this round, that's icing on the cake.

Was the CD round a real winnowing or just designed to weed out people who shouldn't be competing? We've got to do a CD round sometime next month for a different competition and the CD round has a single state level 'winner.' Making the CD is its own reward, however, so its worth doing anyway.

I haven't entered students in this competition before, but I imagine that is part of the purpose. The other part is that because of its proximity to San Francisco and Sacramento, it helps narrow the field by sheer number of contestants.

Congrats to PianoSon!

I totally empathize with the whole recording thing, I've been in that situation myself. Having the new iphone really helps though for those "doh, shoulda brought my video camera" moments. It's also completely inconspicuous.

Great story P*D. Congratulations to P*S for playing well, and nice to get a 2nd place too. I enjoy hearing the adventures of P*Son - keep us updated Remember there is only one first prize so mathematically lots of good musicians are in other than first place. Sounds like you've both got the right perspective to take full advantage of the excitement, motivation and social-musical interactions provided by competition.

Minniemay - Sounds exciting! what pieces will your student play this weekend?

Beethoven Op. 10/3 (1st mvt), Ravel Jeux d'eau and Chopin Bb minor Scherzo.

Minniemay,
My son is participating in the same competition this Saturday.
Good luck with your student!

It's difficult to prepare students for concerto competitions. One of the biggest problems is the cost. Ideally, you'd want to have at least two rehearsals with the accompanist, plus you'd have to pay the accompanist each time. There are several community orchestras in SoCal that sponsor concerto competitions, in which the winners get to perform with the orchestra. What an honor it would be! But, alas, the cost does interfere.

Congrats and this IS a great story. It also makes me feel that you have a very healthy relationship with P*S, which somehow seems rare these days!

But all this sounds awesome, and I won't try to hide that I felt a tiny bit jealous of P*S.

Nikolas

PS, why the * between the P*D/P*S? I would imagine that this would result to D/S (silly math joke).

PS2. As for the brag mode: If this doesn't derseve the brag mode/father mode on I don't know what is! Hopefully the next thread will be about the next competition Anthony came FIRST! Well done and congrats!

Well, his piano teacher accompanied him and she didn't charge extra.

Actually, I intend to write out my next check for extra.

The real cost to him was foregone opportunity. They practiced the piece together in her studio for perhaps the past four lessons. That is time that could have been spent on other things. In the same vein, concertos are time expensive in general. The interesting ones are usually very lengthy and demanding pieces, and the time spent preparing one thoroughly could have been allocated to a set of other pieces that broaden the repertoire. For instance, the winner of that event told us that she had been working on her concerto for a year. That's not unreasonable given the level of mastery needed in order to do well. Nonetheless, I think there is great value in pursuing the concerto path. It opens up an entirely different world of music to the student.

Consider yourself lucky, the two local concerto competitions here specifically exclude teachers from being accompanist (one excludes them outright and the other only allows for it on the initial round CD submittal).

bitWrangler,

I wonder why they would exclude the teachers in that way. Forcing students to use an anonymous accompanist doesn't necessarily level the playing field, so to speak. In fact, it could exacerbate differences if some students can buy better help than others.
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Nikolas,

Yeah, I get the math joke!

As for why P*D, the answer is really simple and uncomplicated. When I signed on I discovered there already was a pianodad. He wasn't actively posting but the name was taken. I was in the process of searching for a piano at that point (hence the piano). I was a dad of an active piano student, so joining the two seemed natural. The asterisk seemed a little distinctive so I chose it as the connector.

Piano*Dad:

There are similar rules in California. That's why some professional accompanists are very sought-after, and they charge quite a hefty fee! I think the reason is to prevent the judges from knowing the teacher of the student.

OK, I can see the rationale. I just don't find it immediately persuasive. If one wants to game the system there are many ways to do so besides playing the accompanist part with one's students. And barring the teachers does raise all the cost and planning issues that bitWrangler mentioned, as well as the money issues that you bring up having to do with the the 'sought-after' accompanists.

Yes, the "no teacher as accompanist" rule was a right major PITA. We (us and the teacher) ended up spending a lot of time trying to hunt down someone who was up to the task of accompanying (i.e. either familiar with the piece or someone who could ramp up quickly) _and_ whose schedule (both for practices and the actual competition dates) worked. We did end up finding someone that we were happy with, but the process certainly was not enjoyable (it came down to the wire). It also didn't help that it was right before the holidays and finals.

Anybody want to 'ball park' a figure for hiring the services of an excellent accompanist to work with your child on one of these competitions? This is independent of the other hassles, of course, like acquiring all the information about who to use and who not to use. These other hassles and barriers are a cost as well. Ruling out one's teacher as an accompanist would seem to have as an unintended consequence doing disproportionate harm to less well off families. These may also be families that are less well plugged into the information networks.

Well, it's just like string players, is it? If you are looking for good accompanists, ask any active violinists/cellists. They normally have a long list of accompanists.
In our case, we don't work with an accompanist on regular basis. We get to rehearse with him once before a competition/recital. That's it.
There are some competitions where they provide their own accompanists.

I feel fortunate that in my son's conservatory accompanists fee are covered in the tuition. So if you perform/practice within the conservatory, there is no extra cost.
If you take him to a outside competition with you, you need to pay the hourly fee.

$75/hour. Two rehearsals minimum. Plus the competition day. That comes out to $225 just in accompanist fees for one event.

There are also accompanists who charge far less than that.

If CD audition is required, two more hours for recording with an accompanist. Plus recording fee.

That's how we live.

And they might be good...

As mentioned, string/wind/vocal students have this situation all the time. I don't see any reason, however, why they shouldn't allow the teacher to accompany if desired.

Two rehearsals with a paid accompanist really isn't a great substitute for the kind of detailed one-on-one work you can accomplish with a teacher who knows you well. I understand that this is the way the professional world works, but it's probably not the best situation for younger musicians who need more help in mastering ensemble playing, or for bringing the concerto up to the best spit-and-polish shine.

I quite agree.

There was a big vocal competition here where initially they insisted all singers use the official accompanist. That meant one, maybe two rehearsals for a program of art song & Lieder. Singers who had been working with one accompanist for years weren't allowed to use him/her. Big protest and the rules were changed.

"First place ... Hou"

We saw her play at the MTNA Eastern Div. Winner's Concert last year in West Chester, PA (Junior Piano). My son was representing another state. She was amazing. My son has one more year in the Junior Piano division. It's quite something to look at the repertoire that these pianists play in the 14 and under age bracket. Although my son's program included the 3rd movement of Beethoven's Pathetique sonata, Debussy's Jardins sous la pluie, and the Khachaturian Toccata, you still wonder if that was a strong enough program.

I noticed that the Senior Piano division of MTNA dropped the concerto requirement this year. I assume that it had to do with accompanist issues. My son likes to compete, but mostly, he likes to perform. He hasn't done any concerto competitions yet, but probably will do so next year. He is 13. Do some competitions require the whole concerto? The ones around our area only talk about one movement.

My general comment is that he has always been in a mad rush to move on to more difficult pieces. So, my question to P*D is when did that change for his son. When did it change from a "Just-In-Time" approach to performance preparation to one where there is no immediate goal for a piece? I suppose that once you start playing top level pieces, then it might be more reasonable to polish up "familiar friends" rather than start up something new. My son hasn't gotten to that point yet. If you do bring back older pieces, how difficult is it to fix up ingrained problems from the original learning process? There is also the problem of lost opportunity. One competitor at the MTNA divisional competition this January in Ithaca played the exact same pieces as he played at a competition last April.

Minniemay
How did your student enjoy the competition on saturday? Was it a useful and/or positive experience? Were there some excellent young players? Would love to hear a report

Canonie

That's actually a very interesting question, and the answer is nuanced.

When he was a bit younger, everything was 'just in time.' New material begun in September would form the heart of any competitions he played in the Spring. To a certain extent, much of his work is still 'just in time' in the sense that he's polishing it right now for performances and competitions in February and March. A good example is Debussy's Toccata, which is in the final stages of polishing. But now he tends to start this stuff earlier, like over the summer, so that he has more time simply to live with the pieces. And since they are much more difficult, it just takes more time to gain command. Some of the kids he competes against actually learn things in one year and compete with them in the next. That's future oriented!

Clearly, the closer you are to performing standard professional repertoire the easier it is to let pieces rattle around in your brain for a while before bringing them to an audience. Yet you can also do this with easier repertoire. In the sonata competition I mentioned he played a relatively easy sonata (Op. 10 no. 1) because it happened to be the one he knew. It was an old friend that he had played the year before. But bringing it back allowed him to raise it to a much higher level of polished perfection .... the old friend effect.

I think you can break or modify ingrained habits from the first learning, especially if you have a good teacher. It's a matter of concentrating on specific problem passages and going back to slow practice. But you need to do this anyway if you have left the piece sitting for a while.

There is the opportunity cost, as you mention. If you spend time resurrecting an older piece you lose the opportunity to learn something new. But one of the virtues of keeping an old friend alive is that you put it in the quasi-permanent repertoire ... the kind that stays with you always. And in any case, you can tackle new works at the same time that you are polishing old friends. That's a nice balance that keeps practice interesting.

Canonie: My student had a great experience. He admits he didn't play his best on two of his pieces (which have never been problematic), but he was very excited that the piece he worried most about went better than it ever has. A good learning experience.

I was a little disappointed to see some of the repertoire chosen by others for this competition. So much Liszt -- I'm not a real fan. Also some obscure 20th century rep. Are these kids getting meat and potatoes at all? How well can they play Mozart? Bach? There's so much attention paid to busy fingers.

He'll compete again in 2 weeks. This was a good thing for him to prepare for.

Thanks for the update. Let us know how the next round goes too. Sounds like it was good for him

I like my meat and potatoes! but rather fond of trying new desserts as well I expect that in competitions often music is chosen as a means to an end, not for the music itself. If you play Bach you'll likely have a judge that strongly disapproves of your interpretation of Bach, and this will affect the judgement.

Something to be said about 20th century rep. I was at a huge competition this past summer. In one category, my student played an early 20th century piece. Half the people in the category played atonal (or late, late Romanitc) stuff. The judges picked winners who all played stuff written in the 20th century.

I think it's "safer" to play these obscure pieces because most judges would not have heard of them, and would not know what a bad performance sounds like. All the kids who played Beethoven or Mendelssohn (brilliantly!) got overlooked.

"But one of the virtues of keeping an old friend alive is that you put it in the quasi-permanent repertoire ... the kind that stays with you always."

I think that my son is now at the point where the pieces he is learning could be considered to be part of a permanent repertoire. With MTNA, however, there is still the push to play more complex pieces.

The usual advice is that it doesn't matter what you play as long as the pieces are performed very well. I think, however, that it's better to include more complex pieces that are less well known by the judges. It reminds me of gymnastics; it's better to screw up a little on a complex routine than it is to do a simple routine perfectly. One student at the MTNA competition played Kabalevsky's Rondo, Op. 59 (not the Rondo-Toccata) to good effect. It would be great, but risky, to play an overworked piece, but do it very well. Didn't somebody at the Van Cliburn competition play the Moonlight Sonata? My son has wanted to play Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu, but his teacher always changes the subject.

Ultimately, one would like to pick pieces that inspire the student to work harder, but it's tough for them to find that judges might not want to hear some of those pieces again unless they are perfect. After attending the last three MTNA divisional competitions and seeing all of the pieces and programs selected, it's been quite a learning process. I don't think that judges can be fooled, but I do think that they judge the selection of pieces to be played. They do seem to like those unusual 20th century pieces. Start learning some Sarcasms.