A Concert Pianist Reveals What it Takes to Win a Serious Music Competition
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- Опубліковано 15 жов 2024
- Long story short, or how to win and fail serious music competitions.
One thing that I had to add to this video, is that despite common prejudices, charisma and artisticly powerful performance often wins over technical perfection on big music competition, thus undermining the claim that competitions are for “horses”.
To 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻-𝘂𝗽 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗻 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗽𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻: deniszhdanov.co...
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01:18 Mixed feelings: Overpracticing
03:54 My failure: Preparation Process
06:22 Fun Fact about small competitions
07:02 Tool: how to win 20K USD + dozens of concerts
08:27 Tool: Winner’s Mindset
09:54 My most dramatic competition experience
11:09 Tool: Easier but Better
11:23 Tool: Run-Throughs
11:43 Mixed Feelings: Guidance vs Personality
12:37 Tool: Professional Attitude
13:49 Pros: Even loosing brings perks sometimes
14:25 Cons: Winning doesn’t always work the way you expect
16:03 Competitions are not for everyone
16:17 Pros: Why doing competitions?
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Thank you for sharing your honest thoughts on competitions! Very few concert pianists speak so openly and genuinely about piano competitions.
Thanks for the awesome advice !!! It’s definitely very helpful 🙏🏻🙏🏻
Tips:
•Overpractice yourpieces
•Be ready to win(give priority your first round and your last)
•Winner mindset(psychological preparation is as important as wild practice)
•Easier but better
•Run-throughts
•Find the best teachers but be your self
Tip:
- Have talent
Insightful video, thank you! Competitions are entertaining for the public and torture for the participants.
Absolutely amazing video Denis! Thank you for this.
I just watched your performance of the Mozart concerto nr. 21 (my favourite Mozart concerto) at the prestigious (I might be biased though :) ) Queen Elizabeth Competition in Belgium with our Queen Mathilda in the audience! It confirms you are a great pianist (and teacher!).
Yes I was so happy and incredibly honored to receive her handshake and congratulations after the performance😊
Yes it’s one of the most significant competitions, it’s a matter of fact, not a bias.
I am relatively new to your channel. I knew from the beginning you are a very fine pianist by the way you talk about weight transference and more esoteric piano technique. However, hearing you talk about your competition experience and repertoire, I realise now that you are actually an outrageously good pianist
Thanks for your feedback!😊
"Outrageously" ?
Don't know (no offence meant, caro Denis, eh!).
What I for sure know is that I would immensely love to listen to YOU in the next days, when I'll attend the "prestigious" Verbier's Festival (bought a very expensive ticket exclusively to listen to a pianist I live a profound visceral epiphany for. Won't make names.)
I would love to see you perform in the perfect acustic of the church, maybe with your wife: would be so grateful and proud of you both, and (snobby) audience would discover new outrageously good performers...but...but no, every year the same names, the same child prodigies, the same chamber music soirées arranged between stellar names in few hours of first sight practice, the same batons on podium.
So boring.
So injust.
So depressing.
(P.S.: I performed as singing soloist there, so know what I'm talking about)@@DenZhdanovPianist
Thank you for your support, but I got used to the fact that all “feeders” are divided between involved people, and outcasters are not allowed to approach. I don’t blame Verbier or any other festival where I didn’t perform for not inviting me, I rather accept the fact that I could have my “people” and “mafia” skills more developed!😒
Thank you Denis for sharing your precious advice & experiences!
"Let's stop there" 😁
15:03 even more heartbreaking when you feel you can play things but without having a teacher it’s vey difficult cause you get to a point where internet is not enough, you need one to one guidance
Sin duda, pero muchas veces un maestro, puede meter en tu cabeza mucha confución, cuando no lo tiene claro, o no sabe como transmitir lo que hace, la buena docencia es tan difícil como tocar bien el piano.
Interesting insights, and all the best to you & your career
Brilliant video, Denis.
Just immensely enjoying my first listening of it!
May then try to extract some considerations from a successive listening.
Will keep in touch, hahaha😊
Hola Maestro, muy agradecido por el monumental trabajo que hace con mucha generosidad.Trato de entender sólo con ver sus gestos, porque no todos sus videos aparecen con traducción al español y a veces tengo que mirar dos veces, para descifrar, cual es el ejemplo que está bien y cual el que no, ja ja.En este video no pude adivinar nada de lo que dijo, igualmente muy agradecido.Lo quiero mucho, porque estoy confirmando muchas cosas que he ido descubriendo luego de intentar miles de caminos que eran incorrectos.Saludos desde Argentina.
Interesting ! I love how you keep it real. Thx
I won like 3 composition contests... and I can really relate to your delusion in the end, when even if you are a winner, some competitions don't lead anywhere afterwards... that's the reason I got bored of them. I would like competitions that gave people a place after winning, at least for some time, so the competition could serve as a door for further growth and development for the musician and culture in general. 😊
"If you don't care about the first prize, go play for your Grandma!" 😏
Great listening to the important events in your musical career . But also love the little funny cartoons you always include in your tutorials 😂 . THANK YOU .
Thanks Denis, that was fascinating. To partly address the question you asked: one possible benefit to competitors in those competitions that produce high-quality videos of all the performances is that even if they don’t win they get exposure to music lovers around the world, not just those in the audience. For example, from the most recent Chopin competition I discovered Alexander Gadjiev, Martin Garcia Garcia, and Jakub Kuslik (who gave my all-time favorite performance of the B Minor Sonata). Perhaps this doesn’t help very much (for example, Rachel Breen’s fine performance of the Goldberg Variations in the semi-final of the recent Gina Bachauer competition has had only 696 views), but at least the competitor will have as a tool for further career promotion a superb audio and video recording of his or her performance. So, if exposure drives career advancement, and competitions in their current form give some useful exposure to competitors in addition to the eventual winner, how can competitions, on balance, be anything other than a good thing?
Yes absolutely, you are right
Around two years ago I entered a competition and the ones who played before and after me came first and second. They both were much more prepared, and frankly played better, but I was sure disappointed!
Maybe I'll try my luck in some other competition next year, as I've improved quite a lot.
Anyway, I enjoyed hearing you talk about piano competitions. Keep it up!
Edit: I wanted to ask, what is your thought process behind choosing your program for a competition? How should you go about deciding which pieces to play for the juries?
There are works that are more subjective and stylistically tricky than the others, and therefore even if you play great, there is a greater chance that some of the jurors won’t be convinced. For example, on average it’s more difficult to pass to the next round with a sonata by Mozart than Beethoven, or with Preludes by Chopin rather than sonata by Prokofiev. That’s why on a competition people tend to stick to a more “straightforward” repertoire.
My worst result, when I got only 2 votes out of 8 was, when I risked to play music no one knew - the third Vine’s sonata and some William Byrd.
But in addition to that, you should try to objectively figure out which pieces feature the strongest sides of yours. It’s a combination of your own feeling about yourself (40%) and a feedback from experts and public from concert (60%). 40/60 rule is important because we all tend to overvalue our level.
@@DenZhdanovPianist I see. Appreciate the reply
Ciao, Denis 👋
Coming back to you.
To much meat on the fire, as says an Italian dictum, to make a long comment on your day's topic.
And I would in any case probably be no original nor interesting to many.
As a pianist didn't make any competitions (but won a medal at my Conservatoire for best first sight proof).
There wasn't much of these around at that time and I anyway had so bad teachers, let apart the first one, but just one year, and the last one, for my diploma-year, a genius who could make stones marvellously play. Too late. Aahhhh, the topic of bad, very bad teachers, even able mutilating a very young musical infant... So frustrated all my young years in search of a good teacher! And still studying like a fool, he!
When I switched to "become" a singer, discovering my VOICE one day by sight-reading Matthäus-Passion from A to Z I did few competitions, not the most prestigious ones. One I got second price, another, winners were already known before (Italian-style. It happened in Italy).
Too early.
Because if finding a good piano teacher is a rude task, Denis, believe me, per favore, credimi! to find a good singing teacher is An Impossible Task.
Could write a (successful) book on this!
Too early for competitions, but already lots of concerts even if of low importance: who cares?
For me any concert is THE concert.
Of course when I sang at Leipzig's Gewandhaus it was utterly thrilling, but even a concert in an oldies home can fill your heart with happiness!
Here I eventually come: for me competitions are like a concert, one with different peculiarities, yes but A TRUE CONCERT.
High stress of course but still and first of all the sheer joy to share beautiful music.
As said by Prince Mishkin in Dostoievskij's "Idiot":
Beauty will save the world.
I do not practice for a competition, I just bribe the judges. It works very well😉
Excellent!🫶👍💪
....if one wants to understand what a piano contest is and means, they'd better watch your video. And such a friendly and nice talk....I take my hate off to you, Denis.
Are you taking new more students?? Remember I commented you about sending it through your link? Or is it only for competitions right now??
Please follow up!
Thanks for those competitions' insides, very interesting for a beginner amateur pianist like me. May I ask you to elaborate on how competition performances are judged? What is taken into consideration when voting and how is this system organized?
Oh that’s a huge topic, and honestly I didn’t work in jury too many times in order to give a comprehensive picture. There are a few systems how the votes are counted. But what is more shocking, that there is often no slightest agreement between jury members. On the biggest competitions it’s very difficult to win unanimously, usually it’s a difference in 1-2 votes that defines your future.
This is the TRUTH!
Dennyboy is a real G
The poblem with competitions is how they decide who is "better" on a linear scale when musical art is multidimensional. So they stick to elements that may not be the most important such as playing no wrong note and tend not to judge the artistry of a performance as well and are swayed by players theatrical exaggeration acts of bravado, narcissism and acting (like you surely did when you were younger in those excerpts). I think one easy improvement of competition would be that jury have to be blindfolded but I realize that the stage acting is part of what the public comes to watch as well.
My final take is that even the best performer is only a good parrot and only composers performers deserve full admiration. All major composers we idolize and worship today abhorred the idea of piano competition i think.
All composers may be called parrots themselves, following this logic, because they constantly use compositional devices invented by their predecessors.
@@DenZhdanovPianist While using devices from previous composers is common it is a lightweight point, you know that composing is much more than that. Each composer has his own identifiable style. You cannot look at a few leaves and ignore the tree.
Composing is part of being a musician and not matter how accomplished performers can become they will never be complete musician without it.
@@DenZhdanovPianist not if you’re a postmodern composer. Then anything goes and normal is bad. No one accuses of John Gage’s 4’33” of being derivative and unoriginal!
To be truly original, instead of using a 12 tone chromatic scale, invent your own 19-toned tempered chromatic scale or something, eh?
1. Are you from a place where the parrots can recite text that they read? If not, I think your analogy is wide of the mark. 2. If only composer performers deserve full admiration, are you full of admiration for Daniil Trifonov or Marc Andre Hamelin when they are playing their own works but regard them as mere parrots when they play, say, Chopin? And what do you make of the very high regard in which some composers hold the musicians who bring their works to life? When Prokofiev received Horowitz’ recording of his seventh piano sonata, he sent Horowitz an autographed copy of the score, with the inscription, “To the miraculous pianist, from the composer.” 3. I doubt that composers of the 18th and 19th centuries had strong opinions about the piano competitions of the 20th and 21st century. But there are certainly instances of famous composers taking part in keyboard duels that seem, well, like competitions. There is the famous Liszt and Thalberg piano duel of 1837, and the Handel and Scarlatti duel of 1708. But perhaps these famous musicians were later filled with self-loathing for having demeaned their art with shallow displays of virtuosity.
@@ericaeli3807 You are on a tangent (post modernism) that is a moot point and really degenerate because most people do not consider these "things" to be classical music. And that critic goes to contemporary art too especially woke. Or so called post modern sculptures. Almost all the time they seek provocation and vulgarity as their main device and there is only traces of artistry in them if any.
Geza Anda was a great pianist, btw.
Dont know where to ask this but your tips are very good and I was wondering, how would you advise one to play the rachmaninoff op 23 5? Force and instant release? Arm weight? Arm or wrists? Also the middle melodic part doesnt need explanation as it is very straight forward
This video might give you an idea how to optimize motions in pieces with many leaps:
ua-cam.com/video/mwnX3MtKK8M/v-deo.htmlsi=6oELhIFdDPfVg-qX
16:27 How do you find these clips 😂. I assume the Juilliard sign was edited in?
Spot on!
14:52 Avoid Helsinki competition? Ok. Got it!
Haha if money don’t interest you😂
Y'all can try composition competitions. Talk about an even bigger headache. Just write a piece, mail it to a competition, and have someone you don't know look at it. Assuming they will look at it lol. One of the millions of reasons why I stopped applying and just focused on creating concerts of my own.
The purpose of conservatory training is to produce performers who can plausibly take part in competitions and lose.
Losing is more important than one may think. If someone doesn’t know how to lose, they may end up being bitter and saying things that don’t make sense. 😅
@DenZhdanovPianist I assume that your comment about bitterness and not making sense is meant to be directed at me. But I am not a performer (in fact, I am a former lecturer at a music school renowned for producing the winners of such competitions) and this insight is not mine, but that of Sir Christopher Hogwood, CBE, founding director of the Academy of Ancient Music.
The purpose of the comment is to remind those who would take part in competitions that many musicians with world-class talent will find themselves being labelled serial losers thanks to the vagaries of a system that must deal with the overproduction of elite musicians. If you are interested in exploring this insight rather than dismissing it out of hand, you can find a complete lecture on the subject by Sir Christopher on the Gresham College UA-cam channel.
Sure, I will, thanks. Out of context, it seemed like an attempt to devalue a music education system. But yes, I am perfectly aware that we don’t need so many artists. I learn to operate and to thrive in a world that doesn’t really need me. It’s almost as exciting, challenging, and somewhat pointless as Dark Souls 3 😂
It was Béla Bartók who said that competitions were for horses. He refused to be involved with them.
Yes, later on he did.
At about 24 y.o. he however tries his luck and “competes unsuccessfully, as pianist and as composer, in the Rubinstein Competition in Paris”
Source: www.boosey.com/pages/cr/composer/timeline?composerid=2694
Funnily enough, I mostly hear such strongly saturated opinions from people who wanted to, but didn’t manage to advance their careers via competitions.
But of course there is no slightest trace of resentfulness, just pure love to art in such bitter remarks lol.
Who said you don't have a sense of humor? Check out 0:56 - LOL(A)
Haha
hey can u do some tips about fantasy op49 pls ?
There is a comprehensive 2 hour course on this piece available already:
pianoskillsandmagic.teachable.com/p/chopin-fantaisie
I could not recognize you in these videos without the beard. Even your hair color was lighter.
I was expecting an interview with Trifonov...oh well.
😅
Лайк!