How to rescue classical music from a slow, painful decline: thoughts after watching the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition 2005.

Today I finished almost three weeks of watching the Van Cliburn competition. I have long been a critic of competitions, ever since stopping entering them myself in 1998 after about 50 moderate successes. As far as I'm concerned, juries reward the least offensive candidate almost without fail. This year's Cliburn was no exception. Alexander Kobrin of Russia won. Now don't get me wrong, he's a very good pianist. However, he doesn't seem to do much in the way of stirring one's emotions, or carrying you into his world. He is very much like Pollini in his early years, and is a virtuoso literalist. I can't see people getting excited about his playing in 50 years.

The real audience favorite, 19 year-old Joyce Yang, walked away with second. She has incredible charisma, good ensemble skills, and her Prokofiev Second Piano Concerto totally kicked butt (good job Joyce!). In fact, it was the best concerto performance in a competition final I've heard since Nakamatsu won playing Rachmaninov's Third in the 1997 Cliburn. However, it was not quite at the technically refined level of an Argerich, Zimerman, or the late Browning. Also, I think she just needs a little more time for her slow movements to mature. I think these two reasons are probably why the jury didn't give her a Gold Medal too. Time will tell whether she will be talked about as a pianist in 50 years. Probably not unless she takes even more risks than she did in this contest (to her credit, in addition to the rare Prokofiev Concerto #2, she played the French Overture of Bach wonderfully, and the Vine Piano Sonata #1, two works not heard that often!).

This brings me to my point. While there seem to be more and more pianists (40,000 new graduates in piano performance per year by Leon Fleisher's count), there seem to be very few emerging with either the personality or technique or risks of Horowitz, Kissin, Rubenstein, Glenn Gould, or even Argerich. They don't seem to be on the concert stage or in our CD libraries. Do they exist? Probably. Then why don't we see them? Let me hypothesize a few reasons.

1) There are already so many concert pianists from yesteryear, already filling all the series and orchestral events and CD cases, that there are very, very few spots available except for the odd prodigy (Lang Lang and Helen Huang being good examples), the extremely well-connected (Jonathan Biss and Stewart Goodyear had a fair amount of help from Fleisher, their teacher), and mostly the competition medalists.

2) If, as I mentioned before, my theory about competitions selecting the least offensive pianist is correct, then it would make sense that the truly revolutionary musician, the risk taker, the exciting player, the one with new and interesting repertoire, or old rediscovered repertoire will not win. There were a few of these interesting types in the Cliburn, like Soyeon Lee (who I competed against in the 1995 Kingsville Contest, and was impressed with her there too) and Maria Mazo. I hope they push forward.

3) If these "non-offensive" pianists win (and worse, if a connected contested wins because their teacher or teachers' friend is on the jury), and get these performance slots for a few seasons, they usually don't really get reengaged, or they are replaced by new winners. This means that most of the available new slots for pianists don't retain career-long musicians.

4) One of the reasons the audiences are shrinking, and not growing, is that ticket prices are too high for most people.

5) Another reason is that most classical music comes across to an untrained audience as boring, and even more so when non-offensive players are all they hear. A lot of classical music comes across as boring to even the trained audience. It is really true that modern music in pop, rock, and other genres is often catchier than classical music, and sometimes, just as ingenius and artful in its construction. Classical piano is losing out on the popular ranking scale because it is not adapting to the modern music landscape.

6) Any musician can post their music on the internet, and in classical, the number of pieces not available for free download is quickly dwindling. This further reduces the likelihood that these artists will get concerts that pay, because why would you want to pay to see them if you can see and hear them on in the comfort of your home for free?

7) The top pianists charge astronomical amounts of money to teach aspiring pianists, and if they don't charge a lot, very often they are nearly impossible to track down or to get face time with. I had to fight tooth and nail to get the training I did, and that was with a lot of persistence and a sponsor helping me to afford the lessons. I can't imagine trying to get one's foot in the door without incredible backing these days.

So what can be done to rescue classical piano and classical music from its slow and painful demise? I have a few ideas.

1) Aspiring classical musicians need to take risks, transcribe literature, compose in tonal mediums, and record and distribute their efforts widely over the internet. There will always be a certain number of people who will want to engage the best virtuosi and talents for concerts, and there will always be a listener base for good performance that is memorable. Perhaps pianist can put a few of their best recordings on iTunes so they can make a bit of money for their efforts. If you are going to record an old war horse, at least contemplate whether your recording offers anything new or spectacular before flooding the market with the 97th Rachmaninov Sonata in bb minor (1931). These risk-taking performers should negotiate performance contracts at reasonable prices to promote classical music, and the concert halls should offer better deal rates for concert hall rental for charitable promotion of music. I'm aware this will cause some financial constraints, but ultimately at stake is whether live music of good quality will really get heard or not.

2) The teachers (who in turn, become the juries in competitions) need to discourage competitions for their students (even if being on juries nets them a lot of money, and the money for the contestants helps them live a few years longer in this business), and instead of treating their lessons as proprietary, offer video masterclasses to be archived free on the internet. This will allow the pianist of tomorrow to learn as much as they want from the great teachers over the internet, and will ensure that financial constraints do not discourage the talented into submission. If the teacher is worried about their own financial solvency, maybe they should move from New York to somewhere cheaper, or invest widely on the side, or realize that if they really love music and want it to perpetuate, that they need to stop guarding its secrets. I also wish that good teachers and pianists would make their fingerings available at their retirement or death, as this is a huge time-suck for most pianists, and an efficient distribution method for fingerings would push technical prowess forward (I'm comtemplating a digial sheet music format for the piano that would allow real-time fingering choices, etc etc).

3) I know that these two steps will certainly raise the competitive bar for classical musicians. It will make it harder for pianists to stand out and harder for teachers to be judged as good. This is going to happen over time anyways, I'm just suggesting that we speed it up a bit. By speeding up the democratization of classical and classical-related performance, we just might have a chance at not only retaining existing audiences, but gaining new listeners we never thought would be possible. I have always tried to drag a few anti-classical music individuals to my concerts in the hopes of converting them. They have always been surprised, provided I put together an interesting program. Without new listeners, the field will die and the technical standards will diminish over time. Most importantly, without reinventing the classical music concert, and making it more memorable and interesting, and making its format more accessible, with more information, more impressive performances, and more artistic nuance, you won't likely retain today's attention-challenged individuals.

4) People love competitions. The idea of winners captivates. The thrill of victory and agony of defeat extends its wings into music too. But let us not only allow the conservative juries and perveyors of historical monographs determine who we can listen to. Why not create a new type of online competition in aspiring musicians post their recordings, and in-which the jury gets 50% of the vote, and the listeners get 50% of the vote, and anyone can listen at any time to the archived performances. This way we can save some of the need for authenticity (whatever that means) and still get musicians that thrill the audience. I would vote the audience and the jury should not know the name or details or race of the contestant until the contest is over. While this may eliminate the visual component, it will remove nationalist boundaries and implicit stereotypes. While the International E-Competition is a step in the right direction, it doesn't fully embody today's technology.

I want classical music to succeed. That is why I've put a lot of my own "risk-taking" recordings up for free on Download.com and why I've written this plea. We as classical musicians need to organize to make it work to overcome the challenges and technologies of this new century. There is a lot of wonderful music in today's world, but also a lot of wonderful music from long ago that we can bring to all at mercilessly high standards for free over the Internet. We cannot stop stressing the importance of art and music. Van Cliburn gave a wonderful speech today in which he stressed that music and art can give us the faith to believe. He is absolutely right, but right now, classical performance needs a little boost so that it can continue to elicit that faith.