During the recent Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, a rather well-known cellist expressed a strong opinion against music competitions in a Facebook post that was widely circulated and discussed.
He quoted Bartók on contests being “for horses, not artists”, worried about careers hinging on juries’ personal taste, and lamented the pressure on young players to impress rather than to touch someone’s soul. On most of this, he was certainly right. There are, however, a few other ways of judging the meaning, benefits and effects of international music competitions. For many young musicians, competitions are not just gladiatorial arenas; they are accelerators, laboratories and, increasingly, training grounds for real life as a professional musician.
Competitions can frustrate and depress – you only have to ask anyone who was “kicked out” in the first round. Yet, as Tabea Zimmermann tells her students: “if you cannot stand that pressure, just don’t go.”
Performers who do choose to enter know they are signing up to an extreme challenge. Learning to play your best under that artificial, unforgiving spotlight can forge resilience that no number of “friendly” concerts will ever demand. Maybe you won’t enjoy the process every minute, but you emerge knowing where your breaking point is – and that it lies further away than you thought.
Competitions also reshape practice rooms in more constructive ways. Preparing for an important competition forces you to learn new repertoire you might otherwise shelve indefinitely: that contemporary piece you keep postponing, the “unfashionable” concerto, the sonata that nobody in your class has yet dared to touch. And you have to do it fast. Having to learn and memorise a large amount of music in a short period of time teaches planning, focus and stamina – skills that remain useful long after the end of the contest.
The old caricature that competitions reward only empty virtuosity is increasingly out of date. That perception has changed, and many big events now design rounds to test breadth and depth: mandatory concertos, chamber music with resident ensembles, newly commissioned works, and sometimes spoken introductions or educational projects.
Then there is exposure. Iconic competitions such as the Queen Elisabeth are no longer obscure rituals for connoisseurs in evening dress. They are streamed live, clipped, shared and replayed on television and across social media and multiple digital platforms, with viewing figures that most orchestral seasons can only dream of. You may not make the final, but you can certainly build your own audience.
The practical benefits have evolved too. Many competitions now provide what conservatoires struggle to fund properly: workshops in self-management, media training, performance psychology coaching, audition preparation, even financial literacy. The prize money still looks good on a poster (did you know that the Queen Elisabeth offers €4,000 even to the six finalists who did not win a prize?), but the ongoing career support – mentoring, residencies, management roundtables, recording opportunities – is where the real long-term value lies.
And there are, more prosaically, the perks: you come away with broadcast-quality recordings and videos of major repertoire, in a major hall, with an orchestra, produced at someone else’s expense. For young artists trying to secure management or festival slots, that is priceless.
All of this came into particularly sharp focus at this year’s Queen Elisabeth Cello Competition. The final night ceremony was something close to an opera gala: 12 exhausted finalists, 12 – yes, 12 – standing ovations. A packed hall long after midnight. The audience in Brussels very obviously had its own ideas, and did not hesitate to scream “bravo” for non-ranked performers – sometimes even more enthusiastically than for certain prize winners. It was a gentle reminder that juries are not oracles – and that nobody, least of all the Belgian public, confuses a competition result with an absolute verdict on artistry.
Jury chair Gilles Ledure (also Director of Flagey, one of Brussels’ leading cultural institutions) later told me that the Queen Elisabeth is the single most important music event in the country – a competition that people in every little village know and follow. He was not exaggerating. If, for a few weeks, the entire nation argues about Dutilleux and Shostakovich, something is working.
Does this mean competitions are perfect? Of course not. They will always entail risk, distortion, occasional injustice and bruised egos. They can tempt young musicians to confuse short-term impact with long-term integrity. But to suggest that competitions are “basically ridiculous” is to overlook what they have become for many emerging musicians: demanding but fertile testing grounds where young artists can, under unbearable tension, grow beyond themselves. Places to discover new repertoire, new colleagues and new audiences. In a musical landscape with many possible paths, competitions are not the only way forward – but for those who choose them, they can be a powerful place in which to discover and develop a genuine artistic voice.
Florian Riem
