Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition

[MrGongGong]

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/where-has-the-british-classical-music-talent-gone-9150300.html

hummm

Not a very well researched article imv

Thoughts ?

[Serial_Apologist]

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...e-9150300.html

hummm

Not a very well researched article imv

Thoughts ?

I agree if you think it's not all about training for a global market.

Is that sort of competitive training de rigueur [sic] for performing Ferneyhough (he asked in devil's advocate moment)??

[teamsaint]

its pretty hard to know where to start. I imagine people like MrGG will have a field day with this.

But there is certainly some nonsense.

But other cultural matters come into play, too: "Is it in the British character to stand out and be a soloist?" Back asks. "We have the same issues in sport. I'm not sure there's the desire to be the best, to go out and win."

Really this is drivel dressed up as worthwhile opinion or fact. To compare the" issues" with those in sport is utter nonsense. There are plenty of British sports people who have character to stand out and be the best. Has he heard of cycling, I wonder?

On the grade system in music, it may have its problems, but causing those with the ability to reach international soloist level to be held back is surely not one of them. I really don't suppose many with that kind of ability spend long on the "Grade a year" ladder.

Money IS an issue in achieving excellence in any field. The comparison with Olympic funding is interesting. Here it really has had an effect. But one significant way in which it has achieved this is by supporting those with athletic ability to change sports to areas where there are medal opportunities 6 years down the line.
I'm not sure where one might place funding to help the most talented performers achieve soloist status, but in any case, it really doesn't strike me as a very pressing priority. Right down the scale there are funding (and social) difficulties which hold back engagement and musical activity. And back up the scale again, I would be very surprised if standards of entry to, and within the music colleges have ever been higher. There are a lot of exceptional music college graduates out there, and seats in orchestras aren't usually undersubscribed.

[Serial_Apologist]

One shouldn't forget that most ruling elites have always regarded sport as a far greater moulder of character than music or the arts for their inegalitarian systems. I wonder why...

[doversoul1]

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...e-9150300.html

hummm

Not a very well researched article imv

Thoughts ?

I have little knowledge about the context () of this competition but I am curious. Would you mind expanding your comment somewhat?

[MrGongGong]

I have little knowledge about the context () of this competition but I am curious. Would you mind expanding your comment somewhat?

The article has a huge assumption that somehow music is ALL about competition
A competition IS
but music isn't necessarily about that at all

Maybe the answer to the question at the start of the article is

"Where has the British classical music talent gone?"

To realise that 12 year olds bashing out the Tchaikovsky fiddle concerto isn't an interesting or musically satisfying way to spend your life ?

[Richard Barrett]

The article has a huge assumption that somehow music is ALL about competition

Exactly.

The Telegraph here catches itself in one of those unresolved conundra faced by the loony right: on one hand they favour competition, the supremacy of the market etc., but on the other hand they're not so keen when the logic of it all leads to an atrophy of the high culture they revere, as a result of the relentless race to the bottom typified by X Factor et al.

[doversoul1]

But young musicians who aspire to becoming soloists, competitions matter, surely? Isn’t it what the article is about, that Britain is not providing enough help for those who have potential to becoming world class musicians? Music is not all about soloists but soloists matter to classical music. Admittedly, the article is not terribly focused.

[teamsaint]

But young musicians who aspire to becoming soloists, competitions matter, surely? Isn’t it what the article is about, that Britain is not providing enough help for those who have potential to becoming world class musicians? Music is not all about soloists but soloists matter to classical music. Admittedly, the article is not terribly focused.

For a certain group there is quite a bit of support, from Junior conservatoire onwards. I have no idea if the provision on that track is of the quality to continue to produce soloists, but I suspect it is.
If the discussion is about producing soloists, and I'm not sure that is where discussion should start, then I suspect the place to look is in the vast pool of untapped talent among those who never get support of a kind which has any chance of leading to the kind of skill level required.
Regarding the article, I wonder what the issue really is. Is it real concern, about the damage(real or imaginary) to a tiny group of individuals, or A bit of injured national pride on the part of a journalist?
And after all that, I wonder if a culture that demands such high levels oftechnical development at such a tender age, at the potential cost of so much else, is really what we want for our young people?

[rauschwerk]

And after all that, I wonder if a culture that demands such high levels of technical development at such a tender age, at the potential cost of so much else, is really what we want for our young people?

I wonder that, too. Watching a recent film on Lang Lang, I ended up asking myself whether he had had anything like a normal childhood or adolescence, and whether he is likely to suffer from that one day. And I thought of the prodigiously gifted Eileen Joyce, who suddenly retired from concert life in her early 50s, realising that she had never really had a normal life at all.

[doversoul1]

If the discussion is about producing soloists, and I'm not sure that is where discussion should start, then I suspect the place to look is in the vast pool of untapped talent among those who never get support of a kind which has any chance of leading to the kind of skill level required.

I guess (going out of my way to be generously understandable to the writer ), that is what the article is trying to say, that we are not making enough effort to foster the potential talent that exists ‘out there’.

[Richard Barrett]

we are not making enough effort to foster the potential talent that exists ‘out there’

... and if by "we" the Telegraph journalist means "we Tories, with our policies that squeeze arts and humanities (and humanity) out of education at every level for all but a privileged few", one would have to agree.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But there is certainly some nonsense.

But other cultural matters come into play, too: "Is it in the British character to stand out and be a soloist?" Back asks. "We have the same issues in sport. I'm not sure there's the desire to be the best, to go out and win."

Really this is drivel dressed up as worthwhile opinion or fact. To compare the" issues" with those in sport is utter nonsense. There are plenty of British sports people who have character to stand out and be the best. Has he heard of cycling, I wonder?

You're right to point out the flaws in this "argument", ts - and it gives us an insight into how Mr Back "thinks" of Music. In Sport, it is easy to decide who is "the best" or who "wins": it's the person who gets somewhere first or the team who gets the most points in the time limit. A footballer kicks a ball and it either crosses the line legitimately ot it doesn't; someone chucks a discus and it either goes further in one direction than everyone else's or it doesn't.

But how do you "judge" between one Violinist playing the Tchaikovsky Concerto and another playing the Bruch g minor (and against the others who might opt for the Brahms, or those who try something a bit avant-garde and play one of the Saint-Saens)? How does a judge decide that one unmarked rallentando is "interpretation" and another "distortion"? Or whether a performance that sticks to what is written in the score is "dry and unimaginative" or that it "lets the Music speak for itself"? The only "objective" criteria (in the sort of repertoire that gets constantly regurgitated in these events) are "is s/he in tune and in time" - and so the young performer learns early in his/her competition experience how to perform to competition "standards", subduing "eccentric" ideas of their own, and aiming for faster, louder playing with all the impeccable timing and intonation of a SIBELIUS playback.

This, far more than Dada, is "anti-Art". With repertoire worth hearing, there can be no "best" (contrary to what Back seems to take for granted) - and therefore no "winners". Enclosing the mindset of young performers to focus on a self-perpetuating repertoire (often of much more limited value) is also "anti-teaching" - and if our own young performers are seeing alternative, and better, ways of developing their Musical careers than supporting these circuses, then that's something that we can be as genuinely proud as a nation as all the medals of the various olympiads.

[rauschwerk]

I am reminded that Fanny Waterman set up the Leeds competition partly in the hope that it would improve music teaching standards in the UK, and that a few years ago she said that it seemed to have failed in that respect. Is this the real issue, then?