Star pianist quits competition jury over ‘dishonesty and fraud’

Rodney Punt says:

When Italy was Rome it ruled the world. When that empire collapsed, Italy proved it was still potent as it lead the Renaissance. In the nineteenth-century the integrity of Verdi and a few others gave the country’s reuniting one more chance at moral authority. But with the twentieth century and even more in the current one, Italy descended into near universal corruption, despite sporadic artistic achievements in music and film. Today that once great nation is cynical at almost every level, in many ways the laughingstock of Europe. As goes the big political picture, so goes the modest picture of piano competitions. Tragic.

tatiana says:

isn’t Vovka a clarinetist? why a chairman of a piano jury? don’t understand

What a Shame!!! says:

All the system of competitions is corrupted and it’s helps only jury members …they made a real system of reaching money thanks to their students!
Of corse there is somebody more and somebody less corrupted .
If you are in a jury , you help your student.. if you have no student , you help your friend student in a way to be invited in another jury as an exchange.
If you have no student , no student of friend, well…The answer belongs to the fantasy of who is reading this comment.

I think it would very useful if any jury composed by teachers it would be under a supervision of a comity of real musician out of more up of those problems… As Mr Askenazy or Alfred Brendel Radu Lupu Andrass Shiff or Maria Joao Pires …

And just a couple of questions… why do we need so many competitions under the world federation ? it would not be enough to have once a year a very important one? Like Chopin , Tchaikovsky , Queen Elisabeth and Van Cliburn ?

Second one: in any trade in the world if somebody stilling money or does not pay taxes must go to prison ( in Usa at least , don’t know in Italy 😉 ..
Why for a corrupted jury it would’t be possible to pay an amends for their corruption if it is possible to prove it by a international hight level comity?
At least it would be necessary to interdict them from this profitable work !
But maybe this is a question to ask Mr Alink of the Alink Argherich foundation.

Anyway forgot to thank you Mr Pascal Rogé ! An example for everybody!

Peter Donohoe says:

I am in the process of writing a long blog on the subjects of: 1) my experience of having been through the competition system as a young pianist and the aftermath of success, and 2) having by now had the honour of appearing on several juries (around 15) of international piano competitions and the experiences therein. This latest farrago has prompted me to share some of that forthcoming blog now.

There are many things to say on the latter, but the main one is that it has thus far been obvious to me that almost everyone involved – jury members and organisers alike – has had their hearts in the right place. Every competition I have encountered from the ‘other side’ has been characterised by a sometimes confused, but genuine endeavour to find the best system to produce the fairest possible results. It has often failed, with sometimes what appears to be stupid placings, unfortunate eliminations and incredulity on the part of the public and the candidates, but it has not in my experience ever been because of corruption, manipulation or cynicism on anyone’s part. I am not saying it doesn’t happen; merely that I have not experienced it. If there do exist people who do that sort of thing on juries, we must not assume that the whole competition world is blighted in the same way.

Competitions are here to stay, so there is no point in imagining that some higher power is going to ever be able to create a music world without them; it is naïveté of the highest order to think that possible.

They do, however, perhaps have a long way to go in terms of finding a reliable system. I have always wondered about the wisdom of the process of gradual elimination through different rounds. I have also had trouble reconciling myself to the process of vetting the original applicants by a separate committee to the main jury, so that by the time of the first round many applicants have already been effectively eliminated. Both are obviously necessary in order to keep the numbers down to a workable level – so that the competition doesn’t go on for months, and that there is a reasonable possibility of getting a good jury that is available for the whole period. It is also important for all manner of reasons to remove those who most obviously are not in the running at all. Both of these processes are vulnerable to manipulation – that is plain. But the people running the competitions with whom I have worked are doing their best.

That the above have been used to malicious ends has been claimed time and time again across the whole of the time I have been aware of competitions; however, it has never been proved, and in my own personal experience, never happened. The colleagues with whom I have worked on every jury upon which I have served have been honourable, sometimes to the point of agonising over the decisions they have had to make, and often looking back at the results of the various rounds and agonising again about what has happened. My conclusion has been that the system sometimes does not work, not that the people involved are criminals.

Those running competitions are constantly on the lookout for ways to improve the systems they operate – which is at least one of the reasons why the rules keep changing – and they are also, as far as I have been able to tell, vigilant about any chicanery by jury members.

The reputation of each competition will ultimately stand or fall on the results and their long-term effects. In turn, that will to some degree depend on the standard of the jury members – but only insofar as the system will allow. I would not like to enumerate the times in my experience when the members of a jury consult each other with alarm about the results that they have themselves democratically come up with, wondering how on earth they could come about – i.e. the results can often be something that nobody on the jury wanted, but which the system has thrown up. Sometimes the first prize winner has been an obvious winner from the start, but often not so obvious. In all cases, however, the placings below the first prize have been subject to strange distortions caused by the system. Democracy in all its forms has this weakness – how else could some of the world’s leaders have been elected? Why would a music competition be any more reliable? It is a source of endless discussion amongst organisers, jury members and ex-prize winners such as myself – how to improve it so that the public and the promoters can trust the results, and so that we can rid ourselves of the sort of angst demonstrated in this episode at Monza.

Peter Donohoe says:

Theodore McGuiver: the fact that Pascal Rogé’s recordings of Ravel are amongst your favourites is very rewarding to read, but it has damn all to do with what happened in Monza.

Rodney Punt: your lesson on Italian history is interesting, but extremely simplistic. The idea implied in your words that when Rome ruled the world there was no corruption is somewhat naive, and your equation of potency with integrity and moral authority needs rethinking. The state that you describe Italy now to be in – ‘cynical at almost every level and the laughing stock of Europe’ – does not, at least in my experience, include all its piano competitions. I was chairman of the Busoni Competition jury in 2013, and a member of the jury at the recent San Marino Piano Competition. On neither occasion was there any suggestion of manipulation by jury members or organisers. If you have better knowledge than I, tell the WFIMC, the Alink-Argerich Foundation and the Italian Police; either that of stop making absurd generalised accusations.

Mr. Stefano Pierini: Thank you – I could not have put it anywhere near as well as you have.

Ishtar: You merely diminish yourself by being proud of not having heard of those people. I have not heard of all of them myself, but I am not proud of my ignorance. I have, however, heard of Michelangeli, Puccini and Abbado, to name just three. If you haven’t, why are you contributing to a high-level discussion on an artistic event in Italy?

Boris – I think I agree with you basically, but open scoring does have its disadvantages as well. Some competitions certainly do have it. The competition in San Marino intended to publish, after the competition was over, all the individual marks for each competitor given by each jury member. However, the jury voted to lobby the competition organisers – who agreed and accepted the jury’s request – to instead simply publish an average mark for each competitor; this was NOT in order that we could avoid being held accountable for our marks – if that had been the only consideration I am sure that we would have voted to publish all details – it was because it was felt that it would negatively affect the honesty with which we would feel able to mark a candidate who was that in any way related to another jury member, if our specific marks were public knowledge; many of the jury were obviously colleagues in other situations beyond the confines of the competition. That was proposed very strongly by another member of the jury, and supported by a majority, including myself. If anyone believes that to have been a coverup for Mafia-style activities, please grow up.

Mary Brown: if what you say in your first paragraph has happened, I am very sorry about it. It would be sordid and pathetically self-defeating if juries were guilty of that. I can only repeat myself in response: I have never done what you describe, I have never detected it happening on any of the juries on which I have served and I self-evidently do not believe that it happened on any of the four competitions I entered myself – the last of these given that I was a finalist in all of them, and had no relationship of any kind with any jury member – there were the exceptions to this last statement of Pal Kadosa and Vlado Perlemutter, who had both given me masterclasses and were both on the 1976 Bartók-Liszt Competition jury in Budapest – and I did not win….

In response to your second paragraph: it is good to read of your admiration of Pascal Rogé. However, to dismiss the validity of the others in the way you do is crass arrogance. With that level of self-importance we can all thank God that you are yourself not on any competition juries. I myself am not familiar with the playing of all the jury members, but I am with some of them, and I am a personal friend and colleague of the Head of Keyboard of the Royal Northern College of Music, Graham Scott; I know from his work there that he tries at all times to be as fair as it is possible to be, and in his position I would be deeply offended by being regarded as unsuitable to judge because you had not heard of me.

Christopher Axworthy: many people have made the valid point that perhaps the marking system using points rather than a simple yes or no is dangerous, given that the different personalities of the jury members will make them more or less strict, thereby distorting the averages. I am inclined to believe more in the yes or no voting system, as the average is going to be a more reliable and genuine reflection of the way the jury members feel. But one must respect the rules, which have been created by all competitions as an attempt to produce a fair result, with varying degrees of success.

As I was the chairman of the jury in Bolzano at the last competition, I have issues with the accusation nestling within your statement: ‘The jury must be able to recognise the talent they have in front of them and help and encourage rather than destroy them with politics as is obviously the case.’ If the Bolzano jury destroyed the talents in front of us with politics, I was unaware of it. You say it was obvious. Was it? Please explain your charge or withdraw it.

Thank you for listing, in true British style, all the famous foreigners who have emerged from the Leeds Competition, including those who did not win first prize and gone on to win higher prizes elsewhere….

Amit Yahav: some of us are trying, I promise. You may recall that throughout the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2011, there were many jury members tweeting – never inappropriately, but as openly as would have been fair – about how things were going. I have already mentioned the forthcoming blog from myself. Things are generally already a lot more open than they used to be. But please think about the negative long term effects on both jury members and competitors if everything was made public.

Avi Kujman: you are in danger of making the same mistake that so many of us make: you assume that your opinions are fact: that all the artists whom you regard as great are great, rather than that in your view they are. I suspect the view that Argerich, Pollini and Zimmerman are wonderful pianists would be denied by almost no one, so there is no problem with your positive assumption about them. However, you by implication assume that everyone will also agree with you over the thousands whom you do not mention and are thus in your view not in the same league as those you do mention; that is a problem. That is why you would have to rethink your approach totally if you yourself were on a jury (I don’t know that you haven’t been, of course.) Greatness, excellence, mediocrity or uselessness are not measurable by anything that can ever be unanimous or factual.

Martin Malmgren: what you say about the competition in Rome is very interesting. Jury members are beseeched in my experience to never openly show their enthusiasm or distaste when listening, but to respond respectfully, and in some cases to applaud equally – the latter being something I particularly support. The jury you mention would seem like a bunch of self-centred and self-important amateurs who should not have been allowed to have been involved. Again, it is something I have absolutely never experienced.

What a shame!!! : [All the system of competitions is corrupted and it’s helps only jury members …they made a real system of reaching money thanks to their students!] Really? Perhaps you would like to see copies of my bank statements?

Perhaps some jury members have been guilty of this, but if they have, I have never experienced it, and I am not prepared to be tarred with the same brush. Neither am I prepared to be silent when others are being slighted and insulted like this.

You are wrong to imply that we are all the same. You are wrong and paranoid to imagine that it would even be possible to create such a situation. And you are wrong to use a pseudonym and take advantage of the anonymity provided by the Internet to lash out.

The system is definitely not perfect, but we jury members, organisers and performing artists try our best to do the right thing and to improve the situation at every turn. If some spoil it for the rest, it is very sad, but they had better not try it when and if they appear on a jury with me, whether I am chairman or not. And if you accuse me of it to my face, or if I work out who you are, your feet will not touch the ground.

[If you are in a jury , you help your student.. if you have no student , you help your friend student in a way to be invited in another jury as an exchange. If you have no student , no student of friend, well…The answer belongs to the fantasy of who is reading this comment. ] What??? Please tell me where I fit in.

I rarely teach, although I have given many masterclasses. However, I have very occasionally encountered a competitor with whom I have had prior contact in some form; under those circumstances, I have been required to declare it and to forego the opportunity to vote for or against that competitor. Being a Facebook ‘friend’ is rightly enough to render the jury member unable to vote either for or against that competitor – [Facebook users take note….]

Your assumption that I would help a friend’s student in order to be asked back is insulting; if there are those who do that sort of thing, it does not mean that we all do – I certainly don’t, and I have not encountered anyone who does.

For the most part, I have no student and I do not know more than a small few students of friends: it is not a ‘fantasy’.

Do you really think that it is practical for juries made up teachers to be supervised by your list of famous recording stars, and even if it was, do you think that being a famous performer makes you immune from prejudice and subjectivity? Are you serious?

Regarding your two questions: there’s a lot of competitions for sure; they are here to stay, they provide a platform for young musicians, they force older and established musicians to put their opinions into coherent form, they attract the interest of the media and public and they give young musicians something to practise towards and to aim for. To reduce the number of competitions would be to reduce those opportunities. However, even if it were practical to do so, who is going to decide which ones should stay? You list some of the best known, as you do pianists. Yet you omit the Leeds and Rubinstein Competitions from your list, as you omit Martha Argerich and Grigori Sokolov from your list of pianists. Do you think you are in a position to decide which should stay? If not, who is? If so, on what basis are you the arbiter, and how do you come to your conclusions?

Arfael : Is there some implication to your observation that I am not understanding?

William Goodwin : Congratulations on being one of the few on here who is prepared to use what I imagine is your real name. Your Van Cliburn Competition story seems to indicate that there was a gossip-monger judging. ‘An affront to the jury’ that someone chose to play Islamey?…. As for the comment about Abravanel, what an irrelevant remark! I would have thought he would have done all right out of having been the first conductor to ever record a complete Mahler symphony cycle, but even if not, what is his income to do with anything? Sounds like bar talk and silly bitchiness to me.

I promise you that, even at small competitions, let alone one of the prestige of Van Cliburn, juries do not behave like that these days, and chairmen would surely not tolerate such idiocy – not at least in my experience; again I cannot comment on them all.

Pericle: [This ‘mafioso’ behaviour happens everywhere?] Really? As often stated before, the system itself often produces what appear to be illogical results. Sometimes, a jury member may get a wrong idea into his/head about the marking system or some other aspect of what is expected. Occasionally you may get someone who is simply not a good enough judge to be there, in the same way as a concert promoter or record company sometimes employs a soloist or conductor who is not so good, hopefully with the result that they are not employed again. All we can do is to try to keep the standard up by evolving a system that does not throw up anomalies, and by hoping that competition organisers will continue to choose fair-minded jury members. I claim to be one of those – or at least that I try to be – and I repeat that I have not so far worked alongside one who was not. I cannot answer for those I have not sat with, but I think you have to be carefully of hurling accusations unless you really know what happened.

Susan Lofthouse: Absolutely right. Young artists have little alternative, unless there are other extra-musical reasons why a particular individual shoots to fame. A competition prize can provide them with an opportunity to prove themselves – both during and after the competition itself.

Olaugh Turkev: And aliens from outer space ate my hamster. So what? Unless you are prepared to name the person who did this – and yourself whilst you are at it, assuming your real name is something else – and you can prove it, there is no point in your story; it is pure tittle tattle.

Pianoland: Deeply unpleasant, utterly without foundation, entirely irrelevant and totally embarrassing to Pascal Rogé, if my feeling about his personality is accurate. In addition you remain anonymous, which adds ‘cowardly’ to the above. Grow up.

Irene: thank you for injecting some reasonableness into this ‘discussion’. It is indeed a well-documented serious issue, given the vast increase in the number of young musicians trying to make a start to a soloist’s career, plus the decrease in the number of concerts worldwide – at least in the Western World. This subject is so important, not just for the future of professional music-making, but also for the music-loving public. If the contributors to this thread would like to talk about that, instead of hurling abuse, it would be a great improvement.

John Humphreys: I should declare an interest in your case, given that not only are we colleagues, but also I am on the jury for the finals of D.I.P.C. However, bravo for your comment. I will look forward….

Pianoman: [yet you are not providing any real evidence to support any claims of transparency. That mention of a “Electronic Device” is very ambiguous and is not described yet in any way. Until you provide real documentation backing up your statements, we have no reason to believe that your procedures were indeed clean and just.]. Neither do we have any reason to believe that they were not. Have you heard of ‘presumptions of innocence’ – a protocol that is seriously undermined by the opportunity provided by the Internet for people to write whatever invective they feel like – anonymously. [I feel sorry for the competitors though… ] Yes, indeed. The whole sorry farrago does nothing at all to help the competitors, for whose benefit the competition world exists.

Nitra: It is indeed a good idea. In fact, several competitions, including the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, live stream all stages, which surely helps to allay fears that dirty deeds are done during the early stages.

Hans: What a contemptible post. You don’t attempt to explain what you are referring to, you don’t analyse the relevance of whatever it is to the specific issue, and you remain anonymous.

Martin Malmgren says:

Some hours ago, Pascal Rogé posted the following on his facebook page:

“Message to Rina Sala Gallo Competition:

I got carried away by my emotions and by the deep impression some of the semifinalists made on me.
Since I am not so frequently a jury member at international piano competitions, I gave my voting as an artist and I must confess that I did not realise sufficiently that my votes could be eliminated if they were higher or lower than the votes of the other jury members.
Looking back on my comment, I must admit that it was written in a moment that my enjoyment and expectation of fine music had suddenly been disrupted. Some of the words and qualifications which I used in my comment were indeed inappropriate, for which I would like to apologise.
I remain a dedicated musician and I hope that we can all make our own contributions to the fine art of classical music.

Pascal Rogé”

Norman, hello! People are STILL posting, sharing and discussing Pascal’s original post, people are still cheering him on without being aware that there’s a continuation of the story, without being aware that Pascal now has offered this apology for his words – of course, a rather poor and shallow apology, but nevertheless. (please note that he has not contacted any juror or competitor personally for an apology, which certainly would have been appropriate) In the light of all of this, is it really appropriate that this post of yours remains the way it is without an update? It’s misinformation that is being spread.

Also Norman, I don’t know if you are aware of that the person that suggested that you’d be awarded the Cremona Music Award for “Excellence in Journalism” happens to have been Roberto Prosseda. Prosseda sent you an email informing you of the prize; shortly thereafter, you posted Rogé’s inflammatory report, slandering Prosseda’s name….