Competitions appeal to the popular imagination; indeed, they could be called the most accessible part of music, particularly with the spread of the competition format on reality television. Because of the popularity of such competitions, and the wealth of young talent that continues to emerge from the world’s conservatories every year, they seem to be proliferating. “If you go to the Web site,” said Yue Chu, another 28-year-old competitor who made it to the semifinals, “you can see hundreds, even maybe thousands of competitions in a year.”
Detractors condemn competitions as horse races, turning music into the equivalent of an athletic event. Santiago Rodriguez, the pianist who won the Kapell Competition in 1975 — when it was known as the University of Maryland International Piano Competition and Festival — and now chairs the international jury, begs to differ. “These folks that think this is the wrong thing to do with music, I don’t think so,” he said. “I think it’s the only way. . . . Try calling a manager in New York” if you’re a young, unknown pianist; you won’t get far. Rodriguez points out that many professionals who express disdain for competitions came up through competitions themselves.
But the critics of competitions have a point, too. Part of the fun is seeing the range of talent and approaches to music and following the unfolding narrative as the young pianists play several times under challenging conditions. There’s something reductive about ending up with a single winner, crowned “the best,” after partaking of a smorgasbord of variously compelling performances. Yekwon Sunwoo, a 23-year-old compatriot of Kim’s, took the prize on Saturday night with a performance of the Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 3 that started out in a deceptively unassuming way and then quietly snuck up on greatness: a thoughtful performance of one of the hardest concertos in the repertoire. But his win means the competition’s history will overlook many other first-class players, such as Chu (coming to the Phillips Collection for a recital next March), whose performances enriched earlier rounds for those who followed the whole thing.
How, indeed, can you rank three such different players as the judges heard on Saturday, in three such different pieces? The third work on the program was Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” which came off rather like a chocolate sundae doused in whipped cream between two works that each represented a full meal. Steven Lin, also 23, an American who spent his childhood in Taiwan, opened it with dazzling brilliance and a lot of personality, but it was hard to compete with heavier works that were played with, in some cases, more subtlety.
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