In the interest of giving greater credibility to the contest the powerful Moscow Conservatory professors might be excluded from the juries.
As expected, some of the results at the 11th International Tchaikovsky Competition, which ended Tuesday evening at the Bolshoi Theater, brought with them controversy, plus more than a hint of scandal.
But overall the outcome seemed fair and reasonable enough to suggest that at least a good part of the prestige lost by the competition when it was last held in 1994 may now have been regained. At the last contest, no first prizes at all were awarded for the piano, violin and cello competitions.
There was a potential for scandal late last week when four of the eight piano finalists turned out to be students of a single Moscow Conservatory professor, Sergei Dorensky, one of the five Russians on the 14-member piano jury. Some disgruntled observers proposed putting Dorensky's name on the piano contest in place of Tchaikovsky's.
Three of Dorensky's students walked away with prizes. But only the decision in one of those cases -- awarding second prize to Vadim Rudenko, Dorensky's assistant at the Conservatory and third prize winner of the 1994 competition -- met with serious disapproval from the public.
The audience's favorite among this year's pianists was clearly the 20- year-old Englishman Frederick Kempf, who delivered such poetic accounts of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff concertos in the final round that the jury chairman, Andrei Eshpai, proposed awarding him a complete set of the works of Pushkin. Vying with Kempf, in terms of both artistry and technical skill was Dorensky student Denis Matsuyev, 22.
In the end, it was Matsuyev who captured first place, which carries a prize of $10,000, with Kempf taking third place, behind the hard-pounding and thoroughly uningratiating Rudenko. At the announcement of the prizes, the single prolonged and standing ovation went to Kempf. And from the looks and gestures of certain jury members, it seemed clear that they, too, thought he should have taken at least second and possibly first prize. Dorensky student Oleg Polyansky, from Ukraine, was awarded sixth prize, while fourth and fifth went to Sergei Tarasov and Maxim Filippov, both Russians and both graduates of the Moscow Conservatory, though trained there under professors other than Dorensky.
By contrast, the violin and cello contests ended on Monday in an atmosphere of peace and harmony. First prize in violin went to the 20-year-old Russian Nikolai Sachenko, another product of the Moscow Conservatory, whose impassioned playing of Tchaikovsky and Brahms in the final round won not only the jury's votes but also overwhelming audience approval. Dazzling bow work throughout the contest brought second prize to German entrant Latica Honda-Rosenberg, while two more women finalists, Yigiong Pan and Bin Huang, both from China, followed in third and fourth place.
The playing of the cellists, not unlike that of four years ago, seemed musically the most impressive of the entire competition and produced a strong first-prize winner in 23-year-old Denis Shapovalov, a native, appropriately enough, of the Urals town of Tchaikovsky. Finalists from Australia, France and Germany took second and fourth place and shared sixth prize. Those from Russia, who, like Shapovalov, were students of jury member and Moscow Conservatory professor Natalya Shakovskaya, took fourth and shared sixth place.
Added at the third Tchaikovsky Competition in 1966, the vocal contest once again raised questions about whether it deserved a place alongside its companions in the three instrumental categories. The heavy requirements of music by Tchaikovsky and other Russian composers in the vocal contest certainly give an advantage to singers with native or near-native mastery of Russian and Russian vocal style. No doubt this explains, at least in part, why more than two-thirds of this year's 179 entrants were drawn from the former Soviet Union, and a mere 14 from Western Europe and the Americas. Survivors to the final round proved to be nine Russians, two Georgians, and one contestant each from Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Japan.
The other long-standing defect of the vocal contest, much in evidence this year, lies in the mediocrity of the talent. Even the final round on Tuesday produced little singing of more than provincial quality. Of the 14 finalists, only the first- and second-prize winners among men and possibly the first-prize winner among women could be said to have the natural gifts and learned technique that might find them a place on the world's major operatic and concert stages.
First prize for men went to the Georgian Besik Gabitashvili, 32, whose big baritone coped smoothly and idiomatically with arias by Tchaikovsky and Verdi. Almost equally impressive was runner-up Yevgeny Nikitin, already a soloist at St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater and, as a bass, surprisingly mature-sounding at the tender age of 24. For first prize along the woman, the jury chose Japanese coloratura soprano Mieko Sato, a singer with little to offer beyond a firm technique, but still the best of an uninspiring lot.
While this time, unlike four years ago, the Tchaikovsky Competition achieved a generally satisfactory outcome, it could no doubt stand further improvement. Ways certainly need to be found to attract a greater proportion of outstanding foreign talent. Perhaps the vocal contest should be separated from the rest and turned into a national or CIS competition. And possibly, in the interests of giving greater credibility to the competition's results, the organizers might consider excluding from the juries those seemingly all-too-powerful professors from the Moscow Conservatory.
Raymond Stults writes on music for The Moscow Times.