What hits the high notes for juries?

Nikolay Khozyainov was a more than worthy winner of the Dublin International Piano Competition, but what factors can influence the decisions of music-competition juries, asks MICHAEL DERVAN

WHEN THE FIRST Dublin International Piano Competition took place in 1988, I did what seemed like the logical thing. I went to as much as I could, dipping in and out of the early rounds, and going to hear all 12 semi-final recitals as well as the six concerto performances of the finals. I made the assumption that many other people have made, that the cream would rise, and that the later rounds would be of a higher standard than the earlier ones.

It turned out to be a sometimes disconcerting experience. I discovered that nerves can play a greater role in the second round than in the first, and that players who lack experience working with an orchestra often fade in the finals. But, apart from all of that, players who impressed me would sometimes fail to progress and others who seemed less accomplished would get into the next round. What was going on? Well, it was always possible that the explanation lay in performances I had simply never heard; for example, perhaps someone who had failed to shine in round two had made it through to the semi-finals because they had been superb in round one.

A few years later, the competition’s artistic director John O’Conor told me that the Hungarian pianist Klára Würtz made such an impression in Mozart’s A minor Rondo in round one in 1988 that it helped carry her through to the final. And that, similarly, it was Fred Karpoff’s round-one performance of fellow American Edward MacDowell’s rarely-heard Second Sonata that propelled him to the semi-finals in 1991.

On the other hand, first impressions can be hugely important. O’Conor talked to an interviewer about Antti Siirala, who won in Dublin and Leeds in 2003, saying that: “By the end of the first line of the first movement of the Mozart Sonata, K533 [the first work Siirala played in Dublin], I think the whole jury had decided that this was the first prize winner.” Surely the rest of his playing, not to mention the performances by everyone else, had to have some bearing?

The public’s view of puzzling decisions tends to be jaundiced, but there seemed to be no particular dissent about this year’s deserved Dublin winner Nikolay Khozyainov. In the wider world of international music competitions it is often presumed that horse-trading goes on between jury members, many of whom have pupils in the competitions they judge. People who have served on juries have confirmed this kind of activity, and other kinds of favouritism are talked about, too – negative voting to protect chosen players, and even backhanders and inducements, a particularly hot topic when manufacturers are competing for players to use their instruments. The Dublin voting system, by the way, precludes negative voting, and piano-makers were a non-issue this year, as, for the first time, only Steinway pianos were used.

People have also speculated about nationality being a consideration, in the belief that competitions may somehow want winners from particular countries or continents to help spread their fame and further their cause. Remarkably, unlike the Tchaikovsky in Moscow, the Chopin in Warsaw, the Van Cliburn in Fort Worth, and the Queen Elisabeth in Brussels, Dublin has yet to have either a female first prizewinner or one from Asia.

Back in the 1990s I decided that the best way of trying to understand what was going on was to hear every performance in every round. Obviously, tastes differ. There’s absolutely no reason why there should be agreement between the jury and anyone else. But one of the things I do at every competition is try to figure out if any extra factors might be at play.

The voting system probably accounts for a lot. It doesn’t discriminate between jury members’ hottest choices and their lukewarm inclusions. I consulted the late Garret FitzGerald, an expert on statistics and voting systems among so many other things, about it. No voting system is perfect, of course. But the lack of discrimination, he assured me, was bound to let through players who would be filtered out if strength of preference was taken into account.

This year, 17 of the Dublin competitors listed jury members, nine in all, as their teachers. Teachers cannot vote for their pupils. I have over the years crunched the numbers on jury members’ pupils, and found a small bias in their favour in the early rounds and a small bias against them later on, but nothing that seemed of any significance in relation to the decisions made on the performances of the finals. But I’m always on the lookout for any other influences that might be at play.

A new one occurred to me this year, an outcome of having read Roy F Baumeister and John Tierney's book, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. The relevant concept is "decision fatigue", the idea that the more decisions you make on the trot, the less reliable the later ones are likely to be. You can find a description of some of the startling research at iti.ms/MzK2rf.

Baumeister and Tierney’s book prompted me to calculate the success rates for Dublin competitors based on whether they played at the start of a session, after a mid-session coffee break, or in the other slots, which would seem more prone to decision fatigue.

With 24 players to enter round two from a field of 51, the average success rate comes out at 47 per cent. The session starters, however, had a success rate of 55 per cent. The post-coffee-break players clocked up 70 per cent. The rest of the field managed just 37 per cent.

Of the 24 players in round two, 12 were chosen for the semi-finals, giving an average progress rate of 50 per cent. However, 83 per cent of the session starters got through. The post-coffee break players’ rate was 33 percent, with the rest managing 42 per cent. And session starters were again ahead of the rest when it came to progress from the semi-finals to the finals. Given that decision fatigue has been shown to affect anyone from judges to shoppers (and even dogs) it doesn’t seem unreasonable that even experts listening to piano playing from 10 in the morning to 10 at night could be affected.

None of this, of course, detracts from the achievement of this year’s fully worthy winner, Nikolay Khozyainov. Apart from anything else, at no stage in the competition did he have the apparent advantage of playing at the opening of a full session.

It's now possible, by the way, to examine the full diversity of a major competition jury's responses. You'll find links to all the voting for the 2010 Chopin Competition, and much more besides (including performances), at chopin2010blog.com. Khozyainov was the top scorer in the first round there, and made it to the finals, but didn't win a prize. And you can revisit his recent success, through a video of the Dublin finals, at iti.ms/MzKBBg.