News
XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition Winners Announced
July 1, 2011
The jury has announced the winners of the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition.
Competition Day Fifteen: Performances Come to a Close
June 30, 2011
Cello, violin, and voice performances come to a close as pianists prepare to end their competition on June 30.
Awards Ceremony to be held on June 30 at 8:00 p.m.
Competition Day Fourteen: Finals Continue
June 29, 2011
Round III piano, cello, and violin performances continue.
Vocalists prepare for finals to begin on June 29.
Competition Day Thirteen: Heading to the Finish
June 28, 2011
Instrumentalists begin Round III, while vocalists finish Round II and prepare for the final round.
A discussion with voice juror Renata Scotto is planned for June 28.
Competition Day Twelve: Conference on Music Competitions
June 27, 2011
Recap on the international conference Music Competitions: Business or True Art?
Round II of the voice competition begins, while instrumentalists prepare for Round III.
Competition Day Eleven: Press Conference with Van Cliburn
June 26, 2011
Van Cliburn discusses his win at the first Tchaikovsky Competition, and talks with journalists about his stunning career. An audio download is available.
Finalists in the instrumental categories prepare for Round III.
Competition Day Nine: Instrumentalists Perform with Chamber Orchestra; Voice Round I Continues
June 24, 2011
Piano, cello, and violin competitions continue with Round II, Phase II, as competitors perform with chamber orchestra.
Round I of the voice competition continues.
Competition Day Eight: Voice Begins; International Conference Announced
June 23, 2011
The voice competition began today in St. Petersburg. Meanwhile, piano, cello, and violin competitors prepared for Round II, Phase II, which begins June 24.
An international conference, titled Music Competitions: Business or True Art?, will be held June 26.
Competition Day Seven: Round II, Phase I Results and Voice Competition Order
June 22, 2011
Results are announced for Round II, Phase I in piano, cello, and violin competitions.
Voice competitors draw for Round I performance order.
Competition Day Six: Round II Begins
June 21, 2011
On the sixth day of the competition, Round II began for piano and cello competitors. Round II continued in the violin category.
Meanwhile, vocalists drew lots to determine performance order for their Round I, which begins June 22.
Competition Day Five: Piano and Violin Round I Results Announced
June 20, 2011
Twelve piano and twelve violin competitors move to Round II, Phase I.
Round II of the cello competition begins.
Competition Day Four: Piano, Violin Continue and Round I Results for Cellists
June 19, 2011
Piano and violin competitions continue and results for Round I of the cello competition are announced.
Competition Day Three: Three Disciplines Continue Round I
June 18, 2011
Competitors in the piano, cello, and violin categories continued to vie for spots in Round II.
Attention Journalists: a discussion with American cellist Lynn Harrell is scheduled for June 18 at 4:00 p.m. at the Moscow Press Club.
Competition Day Two: Violinists Enter the Fray
June 17, 2011
Piano performances continued in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory and cello concerts went on in the Small Hall. Simultaneously, in St. Petersburg, the violin competition kicked off in the Small Hall of that city's conservatory.
Tchaikovsky producer Molly McBride on the 2011 webcast
Interview with Molly McBride, Producer of the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition webcast
How many people do you expect to watch the Tchaikovsky webcast?
Based on viewership of the 2009 International Van Cliburn Piano Competition we expect the bigger and more famous XIV Tchaikovsky Competition to have over 1,000,000 viewers and expect between 200,000 and 300,000 viewers during the final round of the competition.
Except live perfomances, will anything else be shown there?
In addition to performances, the viewer will be able to watch:
- Live streamed rehearsals with orchestras
- Live streamed One-on-One meetings with competitors and conductors
- On-Demand Daily Competition Update
- On-Demand Interviews in Russian and English.
- On-Demand Documentary Shorts about the competition
- The Opening Gala Concert live on June 14
- The Awards Ceremony live on June 30
- The Gala Laureates Concert live from Moscow on July 1
It's not the first time you are a webcast producer. What are the difficulties you have to face in Russia during the preparation process?
The biggest difficulty in mounting the webcast of the Tchaikovsky Competition is that it will take place in 2 cities in 4 theaters simultaneously. Besides the Olympics, no webcast has been this ambitious or complex. On top of that performances will be in different theaters for the preliminary rounds and final round.
So that means we will be streaming from a total of 7 theaters over the course of the competition! That's a lot of design, equipment and people to coordinate.
Another interesting challenge with this webcast is language. There are competitors from all over the world participating in the competition; their families, friends and supporters will be following the competition all the way from Russia to Mongolia, to Europe, to North America, to China, Taiwan, Korea, Iceland, Israel and the Baltic States! We need to make our webcast accessible to these foreign viewers and music enthusiasts around the world. Therefore, all interviews and documentary shorts will all be translated into English for the international audience.
Don't you think that the whole webcast idea can decrease the number of people who come to the concert halls and have the opportunity to almost touch the music there?
Absolutely not! Webcasts of live concerts have been shown to increase interest in attending live concerts. The webcast allows people who cannot attend performances in Moscow or St. Petersburg during the competition to see these great concerts. But there is nothing like the excitement of being in a hall, feeling the electricity that passes between performer and audience, the shared experience in time and space. For people living in Moscow and St. Petersburg (and those able to travel to Russia for the competition) the webcast will be an "amuse-bouche", something to whet the appetite for attending one of the performances in person. This has been one of the successful results in the live HD broadcasts of operas from the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the National Theater in London. And it was the case with attendance at the Van Cliburn Competition - the audience during the final round of the competition increased significantly from people who had been following the competition on the webcast and were inspired to see and be a part of performances in the theater.
What quality of picture and, most importantly, sound can we expect from the Tchaikovsky webcast?
The Tchaikovsky Competition will be filmed and streamed in HD. All performances will be filmed multicamera style to bring viewers a rich musical and visual experience. Rehearsals will be filmed cinema-verité style, giving viewers an intimate view into the working process of our competitors and their conductors.
Will people with bad internet connection be able to watch the webcast?
Of course! Our content delivery system will automatically calculate the bandwidth a viewer is capable of receiving and connect with viewer at the appropriate level. If a viewer does not have a high speed internet connection the picture quality will not be as good as it will for someone with a very high speed connection, but at every level people around the world will be able to watch performances, rehearsals, interviews and documentary shorts on the competition.
Violin and vocal preselection recap
February 18, 2011
20 male vocalists, 20 female vocalists and 27 violinists have been chosen to compete in the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition.
An excellent group of international participants progressed through a strict and impartial selection process by a professional jury of international caliber. More than 100 application DVDs were reviewed for each category.
Boris Kuschnir, (Austria) a member of the violin jury, spoke of a recent drop in performance quality at international competitions, stating, “It’s practically enough now to just pay the fee and come to any competition.” At the same time, he expressed hope that with the serious approach of this competition’s organization committee, chaired by Valery Gergiev, a “revival of the Tchaikovsky competition’s reputation could really be possible.” His colleague, 46-year-old French violinist, Philippe Graffin, emphasized that “although a musical performance is made modern just by the way it sounds coming from the stage, in the end the important thing is the unique touch added to the sound that expresses the performer’s personality.”
The violin preselection jury identified the applicant’s lack of attention to the “decoration of sound” as the area most deficient. “Many of them play like computers,” admitted Kuschnir, “that is, the technical side is no longer a problem for anyone, but not everyone manages to find the idea and the substance within the performance.” Barry Shiffman, (Canada) director of the chamber festival in the Canadian Banff Centre was drawn by the opportunity to see potential contestants as through the lens of chamber culture. "It can’t be denied, the art form of quartet playing and chamber music is not far removed from that of the soloist, and we were looking for both a strong virtuoso voice, and a sensitivity that is associated with a chamber music aesthetic," he said.
The comments of the violin preselection jury were much in line with the observations of the vocal preselection jury. The review of 116 application DVDs led Elena Obraztsova (Russia) to note that “if we talk about the general direction, it’s not a hopeless picture, if hardly cause for cheer: Nowadays, the majority of young people sing notes rather than music. There’s the general impression that they just do not read books. After all, in order to express something on the stage you need to be able to feel it, to almost see it with your own eyes and be able to tell it to the audience.” Regarding the selection criteria, Obraztsova stated that she considers “just the voice, the technique, and what the person wants to say.” According to the singer, young people now sing with much better technique than she managed at their age, “such that the problem of today’s youth isn’t in the technique, but in the insufficient level of culture.”
Another member of the jury, choirmaster Andrei Petrenko, (Russia) said: “Personally, I have only creative criteria. None of us have or could have a motive to label a good performance a bad one.” Petrenko himself was pleasantly surprised by the observation that “those coming from the distant regions sing no worse, and sometimes better, than the competitors from the capital.” There was no talk about a particular method from any certain “vocal school.” In the words of well-known opera and recording consultant Renate Kupfer (Germany), “the earlier division into Russian, Italian or German schools is no longer up-to-date – everything has merged. Thus, it’s more fitting to talk about a repertoire character, rather than schools: its one thing to sing Puccini’s Tosca, and quite another to sing an aria of George Handel.”
No disagreement was to be found among the members of the jury about the initial prospects for the competition. In Obraztsova’s opinion, the quality of the launch will depend only on the “honesty and integrity” of the rest of the jury.
Piano and cello preselection review
February 4, 2011
Cello applicants for the XIV Tchaikovsky Competition made up the largest ever geographical representation of competitor hopefuls for the preliminary selection. Applications were sent in from 140 people representing 32 different countries, including: Russia (26), the United States and South Korea (17 each), Germany (7), France (4), Holland, Norway, Switzerland, Venezuela and several former Soviet states. After reviewing all submissions, the preselection jury selected 25 official participants.
The jury itself is made up of professional cellists of substantial fame and world recognition: David Geringas, 64, first-prize winner of the IV Tchaikovsky Competition, frequent member of the International Rostropovich Competition, chamber and solo performer, and teacher; Sergei Roldugin, 59, conductor, teacher, current director of the St. Petersburg House of Music; Yang–Chang Cho, winner of the 2nd Rostropovich Competition in 1981, frequent jury member for the Tchaikovsky Competition, professor at the Higher School of Music in Essen and at the conservatory in Seoul, South Korea; and Martti Rousi, 50, a second-prize winner of the VIII Tchaikovsky Competition, sponsor of international festivals in Turku and Lemi, current professor at the Sibelius Academy in Finland.
Of the objectives that are important for participants to have, Geringas said,
“It's important for people to have mastered music from different eras, because we don't have as many pieces by Chopin as pianists do; we don't have these composers whose pieces you can play your entire life, the way pianists can play one Mozart piece. Therefore, it is important to be multifaceted. More specifically, one needs to engage with the music of each era the way it deserves to be engaged. It often happens cellist’s play all the masterpieces with one color, that one brush is used to move through the works of Dvorak, of Bach, of Prokofiyev. And it's still very important to feel the difference between classical and romantic … between baroque and modern music.”
Also in Moscow, the piano preselection jury finished the selection process for applicants in the piano competition. Included on the piano preselection jury was: American educator and pianist, Sergei Babayan, (Russia); pianist Dmitri Alexeev, (Russia) winner of the V Tchaikovsky Competition and the first Russian winner of the piano competition in Leeds (in 1975); Marcello Abbado (Italy), pianist, teacher, composer, former rector of the Milan Conservatory and founder of the Verdi Symphony Orchestra; Jürgen Meyer–Josten (Germany), pianist and musicologist, who for many years was the head of the department of Bavarian radio in Munich and the International ARD Competition.
In accordance with updated regulations, members of the preselection jury spent a week in closed meetings poring over 50-minute DVD recordings sent to the competition by representatives of 26 countries. Out of 163 piano applications, 70 came from Russia, 19 from Korea, 15 from Japan and 12 from China. Smaller delegations of applications came from Ukraine (7), the United States (5), and Belarus, Germany and France (4 each). Georgia, Italy and Taiwan each three submissions, and Greece had two. Another 13 countries, among them Switzerland, Brazil, New Zealand, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Armenia, Hong Kong, Slovenia and Croatia, had one applicant to the competition each.
The enormous quantity of applications and firm international representation promised a high level of competition between these chosen competitors. As jury members themselves say, the selection criteria were very rigid but not inflexible. According to Abbado, the most important thing for a performer is sound with loyalty and composer intent second. “Of course, one shouldn’t forget about technique, but much more important is the individuality and charisma of the musician, as well as their ability to bring the listeners into their own emotional sphere,” said Abbado.
The final number of selected participants for this year’s piano competition will be made public in March after the jury's scores are integrated with those of Russia's own members of the preselection jury, Denis Matsuev and Pavel Nersessian.
INTERMUSICA: 2011 INTERNATIONAL TCHAIKOVSKY LAUREATES WILL BE FEATURED IN OPENING CONCERT WITH LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Interview with Sam Rigby, Artist Manager of “Intermusica”
Have you already arranged the tours for the 2011 International Tchaikovsky laureates? How many concerts will you organize and in what concert halls?
“The planning of the tours for the Tchaikovsky laureates is now at an advanced stage, with many concerts confirmed across Europe and Asia. Many of these concerts have not yet been announced by the relevant concert halls and orchestras, so I cannot reveal all of the exact names. However, I can say that all of the laureates will feature in the opening concert of the London Symphony Orchestra's 2011/12 season with Maestro Gergiev at London's Barbican Centre on 21 September 2011.”
Is it a big risk to arrange the concerts for the people you don't know yet?
"That is the most exciting aspect of this project. Looking through the lists of Tchaikovsky winners through history, one can only imagine what incredible talents might emerge in 2011."
What are your hopes for the upcoming Tchaikovsky competition?
"Most of all, to hear great music performed by great musicians. I think it is important to remember that the competition is above all a chance to make music. The fact that the competitors will be able to do so in the company of some of the greatest musicians alive - a quite incredible competition jury - makes this a real privilege. I am hugely looking forward to being present at this very special musical occasion."
Intermusica is one of the leading international agencies in the field of classical music. Is there a chance you will sign contracts with some Tchaikovsky laureates after the post-competition tours are over?
"Intermusica is very much looking forward to organising the post-competition tours, and would of course be delighted if this led to longer-term collaborations in the future. However, our main focus for now is on making sure that the post-concert tours are the greatest success
Piano preselection jury comes to Moscow
January, 13, 2011
Four well-known pianists – Sergei Babayan (USA), Jürgen Meyer-Josten (Germany), Dmitri Alexeev (Russia) and Marcello Abbado (Italy) have arrived in Moscow to make the preselection of competitors for the piano competition. Over a week’s time, they will listen to approximately 150 DVD recordings from 47 different countries.
Jurgen Meyer-Josten commented: “When I hear pianists, the most important thing for me is not their technique but their coloring of the sound. It is important that their playing not be ‘black and white,’ but colorful, dynamic and emotional.”
The decision as to which of the pianists will be admitted to the Tchaikovsky Competition is to be announced in February. The recordings must still be heard by two other members of the jury, Denis Matsuev (Russia) and Pavel Nersesyan (Russia).
Professor Jürgen Meyer-Josten speaks about the piano preselection process.