Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Boston International Piano Competition for Amateurs

It was a great experience to view these six finalists on LiveStream -- what a fantastic set of pianists! I was very happy that Abel won -- IMO, he's one of the most fantastic musician/pianists I've ever encountered, and I daresay that most of the folks in the BPA would say the same. The person dearest to my own heart (and, for that matter, pianistic approach) was Ali Mushtaq. I've never heard him before, but was greatly impressed with his choice of repertoire, his overall "panache", and his pianistic technique. But -- EVERYBODY was tremendous, in their various ways. I'll look forward to seeing the semi-final rounds this week -- a few people I know were in it, as well as a few others that I've never heard but have done very well in other competitions.

Judy is very proud of her son and I'm certain she's thrilled he made it to the semi-finals !!!

Me too, Tim! I really enjoy watching Abel--no theatrics, no wasted energy. His concertration is palpable. The guy sits down at the piano and gets to work, and the most amazing things come from the piano through him. (Yes. I'm a fan.)

Did you think he should have gotten 1st in Chicago? (Just wondering -- I have no opinion on it because I didn't see/hear any of the top people there.)

P.S. Another thing, perhaps of some general interest.....

One of the semi-finalists got stopped in the middle of her round (she had a couple of pieces left), because she had already exceeded the time limit (and also, as they said, because they were running late -- but I'm sure they wouldn't have done it just for that).

She pleaded, "Just more piece!" -- and, to my surprise, there was a lot of murmured support from the audience -- but the 'staff' stood firm, rightly so. IMO the audience members who wanted her to be allowed to play more just weren't thinking.

What's wrong with letting someone go over the time limit? A few things.

Most importantly, it's unfair to the other players. The more you play, the more you can show. You can do bigger pieces, or just more pieces.

It shows a lack of respect and/or lack of seriousness about the rules. I would go so far as to say it insults the competition but maybe that's a bit strong.

Plus.....this is kind of subtle but if you put your shoes in the mind of an audience member (so to speak) ....

It confuses the audience, especially if the repertoire is unfamiliar (which hers happened to be). For example, if the time limit for the round is 15 minutes, which it was, and the person has 4 pieces, which she did, you assume each piece is pretty short, or anyway that the whole thing won't be more than about 15 minutes, and you sort of 'program' your mind accordingly. The second piece was a theme and variations, and you know how those can be -- you might not necessarily know when the piece is over. After a while, I assumed she was already into her 3rd piece, maybe even her 4th, because she had already been playing so long. But no, it was still that same piece.

It's not nice to scramble the brains of the audience.
She didn't think about that, just as she hadn't thought about other aspects of it either. The staff did the right thing by making an issue of it, especially since her full program would have hugely exceeded the limit.

Although.....in a fit of ironic inconsistency, they gave her the award for "Creative Programming."
When someone plans a program that ignores the time limit, and when you call her on it, it doesn't make a lot of sense to give her an honor for her programming.

BTW, in the Cliburn amateur semi-finals, one of the top candidates exceeded the limit by 3 full minutes. They didn't stop him, but they didn't advance him either. I wonder if this was a factor -- he had been considered one of the 'favorites,' and still was after his semi-final playing. (His program included three pieces, two of them quite short. All he would have needed to do was omit one of them.)

Hmmm. That's a tough one, Mark! There were so many excellent performances, and, if you remember that particular discussion thread, the judging was kind of goofy. He certainly could have been awarded 1st. I remember his performances pretty well. I was most taken by the Scarlatti that he played. It was phenomenal.

Agree with CB -- he certainly COULD have gotten first, although I thought it was doubtful with his choice of the Boulez Sonata (that's too cerebral) in the final round. I heard Victoria Bragin all three rounds, and thought she deserved her 1st place award: all her performances were technically and musically very satisfying, and she played in a number of differing styles (Beethoven 31/3; Bartok Improvisations; Debussy Feux d'Artifice; Chopin Sonata No 3). By contrast, the Paganini Variations were IMO an especially good final round choice, and particularly for him: it gave him a chance to showcase his amazing clarity and lyricism in a work that sorely needs those specific attributes to come off successfully.

Mark, I agree with you: I can't sympathize much with competitors whose program runs 3 - 4 minutes over the allotted time frame. It isn't that hard to determine approximate program length, and not to do so at best exhibits a competitor's cluelessness, and at worst his/her contempt for guidelines -- and, after all, there is a very common-sense, understandable reason for having this guideline; it's not like it's an arbitrary conceit on the part of the organizers. It is, of course, an embarrassment to be asked to stop -- but, then, don't put yourself in a position where that could happen.

Thanks, Tim.
And BTW, she would have gone over the time limit even more than what you said. A lot more.

I just got home today after getting up at 4.00 A.M eastern time. To me the finals were more exciting than the Cliburn Amateur. Daniel Chow was amazing....but then as others played it seemed they were as well. WHO can win this thing?? The final judging suited me just fine, Abel brought down the house! We also heard that he had only worked on the Paganini Variations (both books) for 3 months?? Is that possible? If it is true he is REALLY a genius! My son did make the semi's which was a real accomplishment as he had been at a meeting in Vermont since Sunday and was unable to practice except for a couple of times on a keyboard. It was a learning experience for me. I was able to talk to all 5 judges and got some conflicting opinions...but know that I must take more of a risk in the preliminary and play at least something that is more difficult. Quit babying myself. I did not much care for the piano, very dead treble and large bass, just not singing. One really had to work to bring out the top. It rained and was cool the whole time, very humid of course. I do wish perhaps the competitors could donate a few bucks and have a refreshment table in the C. Lounge. There was nothing, no water, not a cracker or a grape anywhere to be seen. After the Cliburn where they practically have a banquet 24-7 it was noticeable.

P.S. To Andy (CinnamonBear): About the judging in the Paris competition (which you used as a comparison): I guess that the way you described it reflects what you took from our earlier discussion, but I better point out that what you said in those two posts wasn't really how I described it. (Also you make it sound kind of bad. I don't view it as bad, and I certainly didn't mean to convey an impression that it is.) I don't think it's worth my trying here to repeat or clarify what I did say, but for anyone who's interested, here's a link.

If I may ask something...

Those people performing on the 'amateur' piano competitions are VERY good in my opinion. I mean they can play some monstrous works, with amazing skills and our own Mark and Ken and others prove that (had absolutely no time to watch the recent competitions, so I'm referring to the Chilburn one... :-/ Sorry about that, this is why I was semi-lost as well).

My question is twofold:

1. What defines an 'amateur' from a 'professional'? It can't be just skills. I know it's been answered somewhere before, but I can't really find it in the hundred pages. Is it the 'make a living out of it'? Is it the 'what credentials you hold'? Is it something else? I mean could I take part in the amateur competitions and fail rightfully so?

2. For those who enter such competitions. I guess that part of the reason is the sheer fun on entering a competition. I actually love that thrilling sensation. It's also an opportunity to show off. But if someone is attempting to enter the 'pro' world of piano music, are you sure that this is the right way to go about it? By labeling yourself as an 'amateur'?

Sorry if these questions have been answered before, I haven't been online constantly over the past couple of weeks and I'm still fairly busy, so apologies in advance (and as always for my constant tpyos! )

EDIT: So, ok... there are two questions and not one twofold question... Big deal! :P (thank God I'm not an English teacher bouahahahaha)

How about we let RonaldSteinway tackle this.....

Is he still around? Haven't heard from him in a long time..

Isn't he more interested about what talent is, and so on? :P hehe...

Musica71, thanks so much for that report!

MarkC, Sorry! I didn't mean to misconstrue what you said. I don't think the Paris judging idea is bad, per se, as long as everyone understands that that is how it is done. I found your description of the way things work in that other thread to be very interesting and thought provoking. I enjoyed considering the cultural differences that would generate that kind of judging model. I suppose I was trying to fit a round peg into a square hole by wondering if anything of that sort ever comes into play in competitions over here.

You bet, I am still around!

This is my definition of amateur vs professional. Not making money from playing piano is not the only criteria. To me, we have to use one more criterion which is schooling. Why? Because schooling defines the intention (the real substantive test) of a person. If a person went to get a piano performance degree, one makes a clear statement that he/she has/had the intention to make money from piano related matters.Virtually nobody goes to pursue a degree just for fun. Getting into music school requires years of preparation, it is not just one or two years. Even more for big schools, Juilliard etc, it requires big investment too. You can see here, that the intent is so obvious. Does this mean that people who have piano degree play better than non piano degree people? Of course not, but very high percentage of these people do play better than non piano degree people, as we can see in most amateur piano competitions. I look at the list of Boston Amateur, the 5 of the 6 finalists got accepted to conservatories, some finished and some went half way. I did not watch the competition so I did not know how they play.

Daniel Chow = Master Degree
Carl = Two years in NEC
Ali = one year in Oberlin
Fischer = some kind of German conservatory
Lee = did not go to piano school (this is ok to be an amateur)
Abel = has degree


People like you, Mark Cannon (MC) are real amateurs. You play because you love to play piano. By the way, it was a big accomplishment for MC (a non degree person) to break the first round of Van Cliburn...Congrat.

Nikolas, you should compete in the amateur competitions too. Don't think that you can win easily. You will be competing against people at your level, they just do not make money from playing piano like you.

So far only Houston Chopin Society Competition that I view as a real amateur piano competition. We need more like this.....

Ron, you touch on a point that has been an area of concern since the regional Amateur competitions began to take hold -- the presence of "semi-Professionals" with previous advanced training in Piano performance procuring the bulk of the semi-Final and all of the Final slots, at the expense of the rest of the contestants. There are a lot of these people around, and new ones show up at each Competition. The overall negative effect is to weight virtuosic choices inordinately over pianistic literature of more moderate demand.
Berlin is the one Competition I've seen that addresses this
to some extent: they have two tiers at which one can enter, one more modest than the other in terms of technical mastery. This presupposes that you have enough interested parties in each tier to make that work. Berlin did in 2010, and to me it looks like the Cliburn and Boston now have a large enough pool of interested parties in both "categories" to aspire to this approach. I'm very leery of limiting entries based on "too much" education: seems overly negative to me, and frankly I appreciate the excellence of the "semi-Professionals".

Tim,

Why is it overly negative? I think it is a more objective criterion. If we use making a living from piano as the criterion, it will allow some people to take advantage of this status, for example a rich wife who went to Juilliard, she does not make money from piano playing, but she has a lot of time to practice, take lesson from top notch concert pianis, play with chamber music orchestra etc. By using schooling as one of the criteria, it will eliminate this type of contestant from competing in the non degree category.

I totally agree with you regarding the two categories approach in an amateur piano competition. People with degree and people without degree. The non degree people can join the degree category if they want to, but not the other way around. I think this will solve the problem.

Each different organization addresses it their own way, with somewhat differing definitions, and to me, it's all mostly fine, and if I don't like how an organization defines it, I just don't go there. The main thing that IMO throws it off is if they don't make the bottom age requirement high enough; just about anything else I can take (within reason), but not that.

The Cliburn, at its first amateur competition, said you needed to be at least 30. They seemed immediately to realize that 30 was too young, and so they made it 35 the next year, and ever since. But oddly, most of the competitions that have followed in their footsteps have let you be even younger than 30, sometimes as young as 21. To me, that's ridiculous. How can someone be an "amateur" musician when they're too young to have established anything as a career? Plus, many of those very young contestants are people who are fresh out of a conservatory or piano-major program. The problem isn't that these young people dominate the later rounds and the prizes; they don't. It's that their presence, in subtle ways, changes the atmosphere for everybody. The emphasis tilts from "let's see what everybody can do" to "how 'correctly' do they play," and what you get (IMO) is something of a schoolchild environment. (I'm not talking now about age, I'm talking about emphasis.)

About the "separate categories" thing: I would hate for there to be more competitions that do that, and I don't think I'd ever go to one. I pray that the Cliburn, at least, never does it.