In designing the concept of a new piano competition, we had certain goals in mind. One was to achieve the most possible fairness in the judging. Every conflict of interest I could think of was eliminated. Neither I, nor future artistic directors can vote with the jury. Even though I cannot vote, my students still may not enter the competition, nor can the students of other jury members going back five years, or a relative of a juror. Starting with the next competition, once an application has been submitted, no applicant shall be permitted to attend masterclasses of the announced jury members. No system is foolproof, but one thing is certain: contestants at the Minnesota International Piano-e-Competition are judged on their merit, not on what school or country they come from, or who their teacher is.
Judging is made as simple as possible. There are no points to add or subtract. It is a simple “yes” or “no” decision at every round. In awarding the prizes, judges fill in the name of the finalists for each prize, one at the time. Judges make their decisions based on the total performance. All components matter equally – the Recital Round, the Schubert Round, the chamber music and the concerto components. All performances contribute to the total impression and play a part in the final decision. One has to hear all the performances by all the contestants to have an understanding as to why the final decisions come out the way they do.
Our other goal was to apply the most advanced technology available to make the competition accessible by the widest possible audience. At the same time I was looking for ways to involve in the judging a star performer who could not find the time to come to the Twin Cities in person. All ideas inevitably led to the extensive use of the Internet – quite a new concept in piano competitions at the time. Hence the use of “e” in the e-Competition name: to set it apart. Remember, we started in the year 2000!
Yes, Disklaviers used in the e-Competition are real pianos. Yamaha starts with the best possible CFIIIS Concert Grand (now CFX!), and then equips it with fiber optic technology to allow it to record the most minute gradations of a key or a pedal being pressed, in the form of MIDI data. The resulting MIDI files then can be played on another piano equipped with the same technology to produce a performance virtually indistinguishable from the original. Every year the International Jury had a chance to hear a Disklavier playback of the performance they had just judged, and they couldn't tell the difference.
What can Disklavier do? In the first e-Competition Yefim Bronfman was able to judge the final rounds, while on tour in Japan . The CFIIIS Disklavier Pro was placed in front of him in Hamamatsu , synched to a large video screen. The sound came from the piano in sync with the moving image of the performer. According to Bronfman “after adjusting to listening to the Disklavier piano, it has become a completely natural experience.”
Starting with the second competition (2004), 60 selected contestants are invited to one of the five sites worldwide for the Disklavier/Video recordings. Thus, instead of flying to St. Paul for the preliminary round, contestants are able to perform a 25 minute live audition on Disklavier while being videotaped, in a location closer to home. The first round judging in St. Paul brings the number of contestants down to 24, who are then invited to compete in Minnesota before the actual competition jury. Contestants who make it to this stage of the competition have all their expenses paid, including the trip to the preliminary recording site. There are big advantages to such a setup. Every contestant is viewed by the same group of judges, is virtually performing on the same piano and in the same hall – all saving quite a bit of money in the process.
Yes, all the contestants you hear at the actual competition play live and unedited throughout all rounds. There are thousands of Disklaviers in the world today – and it is the best selling reproducing piano. Every owner can download a MIDI file from the e-Competition and play it back on his or her own Disklavier. In the Competition we are using Yamaha Concert Grand Disklaviers because they are the only readily available pianos capable of highest quality reproduction of a performance.
MIDI files are not the same as audio recordings. They do not contain the actual sound of a performance. Instead, they contain information that can be used to recreate the original performance. The ideal way to use these MIDI files is to play them in a Yamaha Disklavier piano, preferably a “pro” model. The second best way to enjoy these MIDI recordings is to play them in a high quality digital piano. When you play the files on your computer, you are using a low quality tone generator to reproduce the performances. In most cases, you will hear an artificial piano sound that does not respond to the high resolution pedal data in the MIDI files.