Editorial: When a jury can’t make up its mind
OrchestrasThe Joachim violin competition has a rotten record in producing winners.
Over 33 years, it has failed to deliver a world-conquering soloist. For several years, as we documented on slippedisc.com, the competition was dominated by two professor in favour of their students. Since the clean-up in 2018, it has struggled for world attention.
The best winners the competition has yielded are two outstanding concertmasters, Frank Huang (2000) and Robert Chen (1994).
The latest result is a new low.
Faced with two contenders of quite different merits, the jury threw up its hands and split the title. The audience had no trouble in deciding it preferred one over the other. What was so hard for the jury? Was someone rooting for a friend’s protege? Did they simply get tired and vote to go to bed?
A split result is a dereliction of jury duty. The administrator should have kept them locked in a room until a clearf result emerged.
The split outcome is bad for everyone. For the competition which emerges yet again without a credible result. For the jurors, who appear indecisive. And for the two winners who come away not with laurel wreaths but with a suggestion that they weren’t quite good enough to take the main prize.
There are no winners in Hanover.
Thanks for your thoughts Mr. Lebrecht but I completely disagree. There is really nothing wrong in splitting a prize. Having served on many juries myself, I sympathize with the difficulty of deciding on a single winner sometimes. Music is subjective with no absolute truth. An entire gamut of considerations can prevent a jury finding a single winner just as it’s difficult to designate a ‘loser’. My best wishes for the winners.
This competition is nearly the only bigger competition without compulsory Paganini in the first round. I think, this is meant to put the artistic aspect over the technical and remove hurdles for the candidates struggling with nervousness. Moreover the candidates had to put together a recital, which had to be „inspiriert von einem Thema“ (what was unfortunate translated into „inspired by the theme“ in the english version). Another very specific requirement to discover real artistic personalities, which by the way in my imho every candidate failed.
To get into the final you furthermore had to lead a string quartet and a chamber orchestra, again tasks which require a very specific set of skills. In the finals the more shy and artistic types and the chamber music philosophers suddenly had to find their convincing daredevil soloist personality. How could they do that?
Maybe this is the reason, why in German competitions the majority of the winners tend to be Curtis students with a nice tone and a rocksolid allround education and not the outstanding soloists we so much hope for.
Wow, one of the best comments I’ve read on Slippedisc. You get first prize
Although everyone wants a single “winner” there are those rare occasions when splitting a prize, or prizes, does make sense. This was the case at the 2001 Cliburn Competition when Olga Kern and Stanislav Ioudenitch, both fine musicians, were both awarded gold medals. One was Dionysian and the other Apollonian – a perfect example the proverbial apples and oranges.
First of all, just maybe if a violin competition judge is worthy of that position they are listening for and will hear things in the competitors not necessarily obvious to the audience as a whole. Often the winner of the Joachim Competition’s Audience Award is not the same as the first prize chosen by the juror although as a rule the winner of the Audience Award does quite well in the ranking. The audience is not stupid but often values different things.
Second of all the list of winners (not just 1st prize) of the Joachim includes more good violinists than the two N.L. has listed. Antje Weitaas has had a nice career both as violinist and teacher after her 1st prize in 1991. Arabella Steinbacher came in 3rd place in 2000 and has also enjoyed a very successful and busy career. Stephan Milenkovic came in 4th in 1994, the same year Adele Anthony came in 5th. Juliette Kang is a splendid violinist, and she came in 4th in 1991.
Coming from a different world of judged competition, the danger of a jury decision is that unless there’s a clearly outstanding competitor, a panel of judges will end up compromising on one with no great flaws but also no great virtues.
“Competitions are for horses”.
Exactly.
The concept is nonsensical when applied to classical music and merely feeds the field’s inclination to a business defined by kitsch instead of an art form.
Surely an audience prize can determined/skewed by the size of a competitor’s social media following?
As such, it is hardly determinative of standard, as regards each round of an international competition.