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  • Winning Canadian music comp. could open doors for young Armenian

    Toronto Star, Canada
    May 31 2008


    Contest a key to success

    Winning Canadian music competition could open many doors for young Armenian

    May 31, 2008 04:30 AM
    William Littler

    MONTREAL

    Her name is Nareh Arghamanyan, she is a 19-year-old Armenian pianist
    and if you have never heard of her, just wait.

    Last Tuesday evening she became the latest winner of Canada's
    highest-profile music contest, the Montreal International Music
    Competition, with $30,000 in prize money to her credit, plus a
    contract for an internationally distributed Analekta debut recording
    and a list of recitals and orchestral engagements potentially
    stretching over the next few seasons from London and Paris to
    Vancouver and Victoria.

    Although she has won other prizes in her young life, this is the
    literally long-haired pianist's first career breakthrough, the event
    that promises to open doors for her internationally and lay the
    foundation for her future career in music.

    Will she ultimately make it as a major soloist? Judging by her
    performance of the Tchaikovsky B-flat minor Concerto with the
    Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal in the
    competition's final round, I shouldn't have thought so.

    While there was much musicality and pianistic talent on display, her
    playing was also patchy, full of technical slips and an imperfect
    interaction with the hard working but minimally rehearsed orchestra
    under Jean-Marie Zeitouni's direction.

    On the other hand, the nine-member international jury made its
    decision not simply on the basis of the competition's concerto
    round. In the quarter- and semifinals - which I did not attend -
    competitors had to present short recitals embracing a variety of
    music, including a compulsory, specially commissioned piece by Toronto
    composer Alexina Louie.

    Having sat on international juries myself, in places as far afield as
    Tokyo, Japan and Sydney, Australia, I know how differently young,
    relatively inexperienced musicians can perform from round to round. By
    the time they came to play their concertos, the six finalists in
    Montreal had already presented a list of credentials to the jury. As
    its president, André Bourbeau, explained to an enthusiastic
    audience in the Salle Maisonneuve, their performances in all three
    rounds had to be taken into consideration.

    A former minister in the Robert Bourassa government in Quebec,
    Bourbeau, together with Joseph Rouleau, the distinguished bass and
    president of Jeunesses Musicales of Canada, revived this competition
    in 2002, after years of suspension, with an obvious awareness that
    identifying and exhibiting the best young talent is a complicated
    business.

    Not even first-prize winners are guaranteed careers. And the jury's
    decisions are sometimes trumped by subsequent events. The Canadian
    tenor Joseph Kaiser came in only third in 2002 (the annual competition
    rotates among piano, violin and voice), yet he turned out to be the
    one singing in Gounod's Romeo and Juliet opposite Anna Netrebko at the
    Metropolitan Opera in New York this past winter.

    What competitions offer is a momentary spotlight, a showcase, in some
    cases no more than Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame. They represent an
    opportunity rather than a guarantee. And as Brazilian pianist Arnaldo
    Cohen, one of this year's jurors in Montreal, explained, they also
    help establish the parameters of excellence to which aspiring young
    professionals can look to measure their own accomplishments.

    Cohen, now a professor at Indiana University, instructed his own
    students to tune in to the Montreal competition by means of the
    Internet. CBC Radio Two also broadcast the various rounds from coast
    to coast and the European Broadcasting Union plans to include them in
    this year's festival series.

    In short, Arghamanyan and her colleagues (23 pianists were chosen to
    participate from 28 countries) have already had the kind of exposure
    difficult to imagine in generations past. Whether she, Russia's
    27-year-old Alexandre Moutouzkine or Japan's 30-year-old Masataka
    Takada (the tied second-place winners) or Sergei Saratovsky, the sole
    Canadian in the final, will establish a significant career is now a
    matter of individual initiative and luck. A big door has just opened
    for all of them.

    http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/articl e/433688

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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