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Local Competitions

Posted by Chris from Lafayette (A) on November 7, 2015 at 01:13:12

Of all the competitions for which I accompany, one that I most enjoy is the UC Berkeley Concerto Competition which is held for UC Berkeley students only, once a year, usually in November. This year, I accompanied a couple of flutists, one playing the Hue Fantaisie, and the other playing the Nielsen Concerto. The Hue is one of those pieces written as a competition vehicle for students at the Paris Conservatory. It's also a lush, beautiful piece which tests various techniques in the flutist's arsenal - it's actually one of my favorite pieces to play with flute players, especially considering that the piano reduction is not that hard to play.

As for the Nielsen, the piano reduction is godawful in its awkwardness, and it therefore required a lot of "woodshed" solo practice time on my part. (I hadn't played it in decades.) As I was practicing, my wife was working in the other room, and every so often, she would comment, "God - that's a stupid sounding piece!" And I must say, I don't disagree with her. Like the Sixth Symphony, it comes from Nielsen's "late" period, when he seemed to flit from one little trivial idea (or fragment of an idea) to another. For some reason, flute players seem to love this concerto, which is also notoriously difficult for them too (not to mention very intricate in its ensemble demands).

Although the UC Berkeley competition is open to the public, only a couple hundred people usually show up (partially because the performances are rarely complete, since the judges often stop competitors in the middle and make them skip ahead to later sections, because of time slot restrictions), and this year, they held the competition in Zellerbach Hall (rather than the smaller Hertz Hall), which seats over 2,000 and has that notorious "Constellation" virtual reality sound sytem that I railed against a couple of years ago here on AA. The girl that played the Hue Fantaisie was the first to play, and as we got to the stage, I heard one of the stagehands asking another, "Are we going to turn on Constellation tonight?". The other guy replied, "No!". "Thank God!", I said - and one of the stage hands kind of laughed. This was the first time I had played on the stage of Zellerbach, and I didn't have any sense of what the balance was like out where the audience was sitting.

I just got the results back today: the girl who played the Nielsen tied for first place, so I guess SOMEBODY likes that concerto! ;-)

Last weekend I also accompanied a violist in another (local orchestra) competition. This was a high-school girl who played the Viola Concerto in G minor by Cecil Forsyth (first movement), written in 1905. The piano reduction for this concerto was done by John Ireland, actually a better known composer than Forsyth. In any case, I thought this was not a bad piece at all, and there are a couple of different recordings of it. It might be worth your time if you like out of the way, late romantic repertoire. The girl who played the Forsyth Concerto also tied for first in that competition, so I say good for the judges in rewarding selections of unusual repertoire!

Tomorrow's another day and another competition.

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