It was Friday, 11 April 1958, the final round of the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto was the final work on the programme, performed by a 23-year-old American from Texas named Van Cliburn. According to eyewitnesses, his performance was not only outstanding – it changed history.
Everyone was completely transfixed, and when the concerto ended, the audience stood as one. Ignoring the regulations, even the jury stood up and applauded. Cliburn was showered with flowers and gifts, and groups of students took up a chant of “First Prize!”.
Even though six of the nine finalists were still to compete, the applause showed no sign of letting up. The judges – including a visibly emotional Sviatoslav Richter – consulted briefly and agreed to a blatant violation of the rules. Emil Gilels took the young American by the hand, led him on to the stage for a second time, and kissed him in full view of the entire audience. The standing ovation lasted almost 10 minutes, while outside, the police and military cordons collapsed as fans climbed up fire escapes and across roofs just to catch a glimpse of their hero, Van Cliburn.
People like to say classical music is dying. Reading this, you could be forgiven for thinking it is already dead, and we are just arguing over the dress code at its funeral.
I was thinking of this story last month at a big piano competition in Japan, when one of the finalists played an outstanding Rachmaninov No. 3. Same composer, different planet. The audience was transfixed. Bravos and a standing ovation followed – one of those rare moments when hundreds of strangers spontaneously agree on something that actually matters. But after a single curtain call, the soloist walked away, the conductor cut the applause off like a power cut and marched the orchestra off stage.
It felt like a slap. Here you have one of the great artists of the future, and in the hall, hundreds of newly declared fans, ready to scream, post on social media, obsess, buy tickets, and follow this pianist for the next decade. And the reaction is essentially: thank you all very much, that’s quite enough joy for tonight. How are you expected to support a young career if you start by starving it at the root?
When I queried this reaction, I was told, “But it’s a competition, it has to be fair.” Fair to whom? What exactly is unfair about an audience loving someone openly? We are not at a blind tasting in Bordeaux. The jury may keep their poker faces, but the public should be allowed to behave like human beings.
Asia is often called “the future of classical music” – all those conservatories, all those insanely talented kids, all those full halls. But if the “future” means we strip away the one thing competitions and concerts actually live on – enthusiasm – then we are not saving classical music. Because for all the talk about streaming, demographics and education, classical music is a live art. It needs rooms full of breathing people. It needs noise – before, during and after. It needs rituals that welcome, not repel. And right now, a lot of our rituals look like they were designed by a committee whose last spontaneous emotion occurred in 1973.
Take Suntory Hall, one of the most famous venues in the world. The time the doors open is fixed by an invisible stone tablet. Blizzard outside? People shivering in tuxedos and heels? Doesn’t matter. The schedule says 18:30, so 18:30 it is. Once inside, you are promptly informed what you must not do, where you must not stand, how you must not exist.
We do not need to dwell on the usual suspects: the grim gastronomy, the kilometre-long bathroom queues, the ushers with the energy of airport security. The Cerberuses who stalk the aisles, ready to pounce if you dare raise a phone. With noble exceptions, the post-concert landscape is just as friendly. You float out on an emotional high, ready to talk, eat, drink, decide that music is in fact the point of life, only to discover that every bar and restaurant in the hall and its immediate vicinity has closed exactly five minutes before the last chord died away. Nothing says “we value your presence” like turning you out into the dark with nowhere to go but home.
Meanwhile, outside this little ecosystem, an entire generation lives on their phones. When they like something, their first instinct is simple: take a photo, or better, a video, and share it instantly.
And what do we do? We tell them that the thing they love, that reflex to share and amplify, is vulgar. That if they really respected the art, they would keep it hidden in their hearts. That the worst crime in a concert hall is not playing out of tune but recording a 10-second clip of a triumph and sending it to a friend.
Yes, there have to be limits. Nobody wants a sea of screens blocking their view, or a symphony chopped into 400 shaky vertical videos. But the answer to bad behaviour is not zero behaviour. If a young artist plays the concert of a lifetime, what better free promotion could there be than hundreds of good photos and short clips, circulating in real time, tagged, shared and adored?
We complain that classical music has no presence on social media, and then we spend our evenings policing away the only people motivated enough to put it there.
Competitions are even more dependent on this energy. They are not just trials; they are festivals, soap operas, reality shows without the confessionals. They live from the attention, intrigue, noise, the sense that something is at stake tonight that will matter 10 years from now. If we insist on treating them like clinical procedures – sterile, over-regulated, emotionally flattened – then yes, they will die, one by one, and not because the music is weak. In the end, they will die because we refused to read the signs of our time. Because we refused to let anyone fall in love with the music in public.
Florian Riem
