I just saw the announcement. It is very exciting.
I think this is the first amateur competition in the US that has concerto category, and the final will be in the CSO hall too. It is very impressive. I believe this event will coincide with the Piano month organized by the CSO. It will be a big and exciting event....

http://chicagopianocompetition.org/home/

Good get! Interesting!
And you're right about this being the first in the U.S. The Berlin competition (which I've never been to) has concerti in the finals, and I'm pretty sure that's the only other one.

BTW (edit): Looking at the details, it might not be quite as wonderful as it sounds at first:

"Contestants will choose one of 5 pre-determined concertos, consisting of excerpts equaling 15-20 minutes of music."

The "excerpts" part is worrisome.
If they at least mean complete movements, that's mostly OK. If they don't, IMO it's not.

And from the wording, it seems like what they have in mind is the latter. Especially if they don't -- i.e. if they do mean at least complete movements -- it would be good for them to be clearer about it.

For what it's worth, and in case they're interested in one person's opinion, I was excited when I saw Ronald's post, but if it's just 'a few minutes here and a few minutes there,' I would have no interest in such an event, either as a player or as a listener.

They did a great job with their 1st event, last year. Hopefully this will be great too.

I think they will do the excerpts only in the prelim. Isn't it a typical concerto competition to check excerpts first. However, in the final, they do full movements without any interruptions. I do not think they will interrupt the pianist when he or she performs with an orchestra.

Just got clarification from the organizer.
What they mean by excerpt is that one full movement or a combination of two movements. Therefore, the word excerpt does not mean one min here and two min there etc.

If one movement is less than 15 min, the participant needs to play two movements to meet the requirement of 15 min or 20 max.

Now you should be interested...hahahahaha.

In that case the first round would be essentially "auditions," not a competition in the sense that we've gotten to know them.

In any event, they need to clarify it.

Edit: I see that your last post did clarify it. Do you mean that for the 1st round as well as the finals?

If so, they're doing themselves a disfavor by wording it as they do. They need to get rid of the "excerpts" word and make it clear that it's full movements. (Provided that's actually what it is.)

BTW: I think an exception would be that it might be fine to (somehow) leave out most of the opening orchestral tutti, although for something like the first movements of Beethoven's Emperor or Mozart's K. 271, that wouldn't be too good.

"CAPC 2012 will consist of two competitions: solo piano and concerto, although competitors have the option to participate in both simultaneously."

Sounds like another exciting adventure is on the horizon next year!

Yes, both the 1st round and the finals.
I think they will not choose concertos which allow competitors to just sit waiting for the orchestra to do most of the playing. They want to choose concerto with short introduction allowing the pianist gets into action right away.

A few that come to my mind:

Grieg
Schumann
Tchaikovsky
Rachmaninoff
Liszt
Mendelssohn

Good to hear!
And hopefully they'll indicate this more clearly. I don't think they realized how it would appear.

I agree it is not clear.
I think they know what they mean, but the reader (us) do not see as clear as they (the organizer). So are you joining the competition since everything is crystal clear now??

I might! We need to wait for more details, like the list of concerti, as well as definite clarification on what we've been discussing.

But regardless, lots of other people will.

I know several of Amateur regulars have expressed their desire. It is fun, and it will be in CSO hall!! Many big names will come, including Mr. MC.

How does their definition of "amateur" compare to other similar competitions? What was the level of the competition like last year?

Very similar, but with one noteworthy aspect which might not seem that important to a lot of people: the age requirement. You need to be at least 30, which is on the higher side for the amateur competitions. When it's lower -- like, a couple of the events let you be as young as 18 (Paris) or 21 (Colorado), the younger contestants are often people who are on their way to being professional pianists, and the reason they qualify for the "amateur" competitions is that they're not old enough to have established anything as a profession. And the least of it is that these people win all the prizes -- they don't necessarily do that well. It's that their presence changes the whole nature and atmosphere of the competition in subtle ways. With a higher age limit, even though many of the contestants were professionally trained in their younger days and there are still controversies about how "amateur" the event really is, IMO it's much more of what we would want it to be.

The Cliburn amateur competition, which was the first in the U.S., started out with an age requirement of at least 30. Immediately after their first event, they raised it to 35, apparently recognizing that 30 had been too low. But most of the other competitions have used age limits even lower than 30.


Very high. It was a major accomplishment just to make it past the first round, and several well-known candidates didn't fare nearly as well as in other events. I think that was somewhat due to the unusual piano that was used, which created additional challenges, but of course it also reflected the level of the competition.

Thanks for the info. It will be very interesting to see which five concertos they choose to include. Seems that these amateur competitions are getting harder!

I totally agree with MC. Bottom limit of 30 is very important. The older is actually the better.

These people are very capable pianists. As stated by MC, most of these people were professionally trained pianists who did not become professional pianists due to various reasons (not good enough to be a real professional pianist, but they are very good for non professional pianists). Therefore, preparing for these amateur competitions is not a big deal for them. They have enough repertoire from their college time for them to choose, they know how to perform under pressure since they had had so many exams in front of juries. However, there are quite a few people who had only private lesson when they were young, and some still continue playing because they are so passionate about piano playing. Some of them are really good, but in general these people have hard time to break the first round. Those who could advance to the second round are usually those who were extremely serious when they were small (basically they are prodigies). Normal people usually have very slim chance to advance.

I wouldn't go that far.

I know that by "normal" you only meant people who weren't prodigies or didn't have professional training, but it's still an overstatement. Advancing past the first round is hard and demanding, but it's not as unlikely as how you put it.

HAHAHAHAHAHA....DRAMATIC...I guess..