Rumbles of discontent at the Joachim competition

Rumbles of discontent at the Joachim competition

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norman lebrecht

October 26, 2018

We are not the only observers to suspect foul play in Hannover. This is from a Chinese music critic, Sam Su (蘇立華):

The Hannover International Violin Competition is one of the world’s most famous violin competitions. Three Chinese violinists have won prizes in this competition, Huang Bin (third place in 1997), Ning Feng (third place in 2003), Wang After that (fourth place in 2006). The tenth competition is currently underway.

Yesterday, around 21:30 on October 21, 2018 Beijing time, the competition announced the list of six finalists. From the player’s playing video on the youtube game, the finalists of this competition caused a lot of controversy. The people who watched the game on the spot talked about the behind-the-scenes manipulation of the judges and pushed their students to sprint the gold medal.

Judging from the performance of the contestants, the chairman of the jury, Krzysztof Wegrzyn (the Hannover Conservatory’s German-born violin professor), behind the scenes, made his student Cosima Soulez Lariviere’s suspicion of winning the gold medal.

The 12 players in the semi-finals are very good, and several of them are more prominent. Japan’s Seiji Okamoto (2016 Poznan Wieniawski International Violin Competition winner), American Anna Lee, Czech Olga Sroubkova (multiple) The winners of the major international violin competitions, including the second place in the Shanghai Stern International Violin Competition, and the Mayumi Kanagawa in the United States, are both very mature young performers. One of these players did not enter the finals.

 

Cosima Soulez Lariviere, the judge’s student , has a good playing style. Playing a very unpopular piece in the semi-final gives a refreshing feeling. This design is very clever and unmistakable. But in terms of overall performance, Seiji Okamoto, Olga Sroubkova,Rennosuke Fukuda and Dmytro Udovychenko, many teachers and students present felt more comprehensive than Cosima. If in the same performance, Cosima Soulez Lariviere has an absolute advantage in interpersonal relationships, people who know the insider look at it. This invisibly exerted tremendous pressure on Cosima. She hoped that she would play in the finals in an extraordinary way, complete the high hopes that her teacher sent her to win the gold medal, and prove that she won the prize with the wonderful performance of overwhelming group. In the music competition, the most feared is that the players are used by the judges as cockfighters or weapons.

Comments

  • Jansen says:

    Her Sibelius concerto was diabolical yesterday. Completely riddled with errors. If Cosima wins this, it’s a complete and utter scam. Krzysztof Wegrzyn needs to go if this competition is ever going to have any integrity.

  • Riko says:

    K Wegrzyn is most corrupt of any imo. Worse then Z Bron and B Kuschnir. Evil and very bad temper.

  • Freddynyc says:

    She probably has a label deal already in the works…and its “contingent” – or at least partly – on her winning the top prize……

  • Nancy says:

    She’s a good player but she bombed her Sibelius yesterday.

  • msc says:

    I hate to see someone used as a cockfighter!

  • Doug says:

    She has an advantage in “interpersonal relationships” or is it “inner-personal relationships”?

  • Spike says:

    KW trades the jury places on this jury in Hannover for places and favors on others also. So the effect of his corruption is very widespread. He’s being doing this for years and years and years. Very vile man and I agree, he has a shockingly mean-spirited temper. Wake up and get rid of him from ALL competitions.

  • Don Ciccio says:

    “Piffl: Is everybody in this world corrupt?
    Peripetchikoff: I don’t know everybody”

    (From Billy Wilder’s brilliant comedy “One, Two, Three”. “Sitzen Machen!”)

  • Bill says:

    The fix is obviously in…winner not related to any jury members…

  • Luigi Nonono says:

    Do the “best” players ever win? I don’t think so.

  • Orchestral Musician says:

    In other news, Timothy Chooi, from Canada, has won First Prize!

  • Alex Davies says:

    How is Krzysztof Węgrzyn “German-born”? He is a Pole born in Gdańsk in 1953, when Gdańsk was very definitely Polish territory.

  • Myrtar says:

    The competition is so ashamed of her performance that they’ve removed her video of the Sibelius Violin Concerto from Youtube.

  • JoBe says:

    Cosima (nomen est omen?) looks a lot like the actress Kirsten Dunst.

  • Peter Johnson says:

    Many readers would very much like to know the authoritative opinion of the magazine on the important topic of PUBLICITY (under the conditions of the unlimited technical possibilities of the modern Internet) of all without exception the rounds of international violin competitions and even, until now, the SECRET DVD preselection.

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