From the perspective of an Artistic Planner at the Vienna Konzerthaus, how important are competitions for you today? Choosing pianists, soloists, conductorscompetitions are and have always been an important “filter”. It's incredibly encouraging to see how many talented people dedicate themselves to performing music- with heart, body and soul. Out of this abundance of talent emerges a top group, which then plays itself into the limelight as preparation for their future concert life. And some of them are “here to stay”, so to speak. For a while, people said that with the large number of competitions, there are so many prize winners that the whole concept doesn't make sense anymore. But I don't join this chorus. I still believe that competitions have a kind of filter mechanism, which is very important for us promoters, because of course it is impossible for us to always hear everyone.
With two, three, sometimes four concerts a day you are a very busy person. Still you could take the time to spend a month in Fort Worth, Texas, as part of the jury of the Cliburn 2022. What comes to your mind first when you remember this time? It was a wonderful time, incredibly nice for me, because my everyday life revolves so much about work. Management. And although I remember that it was very intense for everyone- jury, candidates, staff- we were very close together and actually devoted ourselves mainly to this one thing, which is what our lives are all about: music. In a way it was a kind of time travel into my own past. It was really all about making music and not managing it, as we listened for hours and hours to highly talented people who gave their best and, so to speak, put everything in the service of music.
The Cliburn put a great emphasis on the independence of every juror. You were asked not to discuss candidates at all. Did this really work? Yes, it worked really well this time. For two reasons: Firstly, we all got along incredibly well and simply stuck to the rule of no talking. We didn´t share our own experiences, period. And secondly, there was still a bit of Corona regime- it was just the end of the pandemic- so we had very little contact to the outside world. The weeks at the competition felt like we were in a bubble, in which we moved. That was funny…. But in any case, I think it's really better not to exchange ideas at all. When you don´t get into
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discussions, you also do not influence each other. And at this particular competition, there was a very special dynamic. With an exceptional candidate like Yunchan Lim, who is already at the beginning of a major international career, we were able to come to an agreement easily and quickly.
The 2022 Cliburn did not include a chamber music round but a Mozart Concerto instead. How important is chamber music for you today? On one hand, chamber music is often underrepresented at piano competitions. But chamber music requires a kind of musical understanding that some soloists lack, and I think it's wrong to make it an unconditional qualification for everyone. You cannot say, for example, that Grigory Sokolov doesn´t play enough chamber music. He is a unique artist with what he does, whether he plays chamber music or not. On a more practical side, I always feel sorry for the chamber musicians who have to play the same piano quintet over and over for days on end. But as for the question of how important chamber music is- I don't have a good comparison, but what I can say is that where I work and in the city where I live, chamber music still plays and incredibly important role. At the Konzerthaus alone, we have eight or nine subscription series dedicated to various chamber music formations. I am not exaggerating, maybe there are even ten. We have four string quartet cycles alone. Chamber music is very much alive there, and chamber music with piano is an integral part of it. There is a very rich and booming string quartet scene, and there are also a lot of quartet competitions around. But back to the Cliburn: I am just not sure we can continue to expect solo and chamber music star qualities from every artist, even though that would be the ideal. But like I said, people like Grigory Sokolov play mainly solo and others like Igor Levit are very gifted chamber musicians as well. Everyone has to find their own way.
In 2023, you were part of the Horowitz Competition Kyiv-Geneva, a project in support of Ukraine. In Vienna, you are confronted with the ongoing cultural war more or less on a daily basis… The language of music should be unconditional, so to speak, no matter where someone comes from, and I see this exactly in the same way as the Horowitz Competition. The Horowitz brings back strong memories for me in many ways. One thing I found wonderful was the initiative of a combined orchestra (Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
