BATTLING WITH Beethoven, schmoozing with Chopin, racing through Rachmaninov: yes, folks, it's time for the Axa Dublin International Piano Competition to get under way at the RDS in Dublin. It's the dream of every young Irish pianist to scoop the top prize of €12,000 and a hefty hoosh up the ladder to a professional career. But what about the people who don't win the top prize? asks ARMINTA WALLACE
Since it began in 1988, the triennial Dublin competition has offered a prize of €1,500, a solo recital at the NCH and an orchestral gig to the highest-placed Irish performer (the Charles J Brennan Prize). Of the seven winners to date, one is working full-time, not as a musician, but as an oncologist; another is busy translating his CV into Mandarin; still another is about to make a Carnegie Hall debut.
On one matter, however, they are absolutely unanimous. Winning the Brennan prize gave a definite boost to their budding professional careers. “It really propels you into the first level of Irish pianism,” says Finghin Collins. “It gives you good opportunities to get out there and do the prestigious things, like the debut recital at the National Concert Hall. A whole evening’s programme, in a hall of 1,200 people, is not an opportunity you get regularly, even as a professional artist. So that’s a really big deal.” The same goes for the chance to play a concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra, and for a young pianist who might be trying to scrape together enough funding to finance a couple of years of study abroad, the cash comes in pretty handy as well.
“Playing in an international competition is great for raising your game, for fine-tuning, and going for a more perfectionist attitude to performing,” says Michael McHale. “And that feeds into concert performances as well, where there isn’t so much pressure and you can really open up and enjoy yourself. Of course, at a concert, you don’t usually have 15 piano specialists sitting in a row half-way down the hall with pen and paper on a table in front of them.”
Such is the brutal reality of competitive performance. Pianists get, quite literally, into a sweat. Long hair works its way out of clips or bands and flies across the face at a crucial moment. Fingers falter, as, in extreme cases, does memory. And there are other, subtler pressures, such as the small matter of playing against the clock.
When Dearbhla Collins got to the second round of the Axa competition in 1991, she pushed her allotted playing time to the wire by including Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. "I was on stage at the RDS, giving it loads," she recalls. "At the end of that piece is The Great Gate of Kiev, where you're lashing up and down the piano in double octaves. And I was right in the middle of it, two minutes from the end, when the bell rang to announce that I was out of time.
“I’ll never, ever, forget that moment. There was so much noise, and I was playing away, and then this bell. It was a complete anti-climax because when that happens, people can’t applaud properly or anything. There’s no big finish. I came off stage and burst into tears.”
COLLINS STILLwent home with the Brennan prize that year, though, and when it goes well, a good competition can open many doors for a young pianist, such as invitations from jury members to take part in other high-ranking international competitions. Once on the circuit, the sky is, literally, the limit. Collins's younger brother Finghin followed his Dublin success by winning the hugely prestigious Clara Haskil competition in Switzerland. Cathal Breslin went on to take a bronze medal at the 2007 Viotti competition; previous prizewinners include Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Abbado and Barry Douglas. Michael McHale's triumph at this year's Terence Judd award will see him play two solo concerts with the Hallé orchestra later this year.
For some pianists, a win brings the chance to study at the most rarefied levels. “After the Dublin competition was over I went to Juilliard [in New York’s prestigious Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts] for two years,” says Maria McGarry. “I was doing the artist’s diploma, which is basically the highest programme they have for performers. Even to get in was a big deal – they take between zero and two people every year.” Since then, McGarry’s career has taken her all over the world: India, Warsaw, Israel and Germany.
“I always go into a competition without expectations,” says Cathal Breslin. “All you can do is play your best. After that, it’s about what 15 jury members on that particular day, at that particular time, actually think. It’s not within your control. So I don’t really have the approach where I’d be disappointed if things don’t work out.”
“It can be hard, particularly if you don’t win,” says Stuart O’Sullivan. “Or maybe if you do. There’s an issue around objectivity: how do you judge art? The general public might think there’s an objective judgment going on – that the jury is saying, ‘this person is better than that person’. And that’s a hard thing.”
Critics of competitions claim that with their emphasis on accuracy and precision has a negative effect on young musicians. “It’s certainly true that in a competition, you don’t want to offend anybody,” O’Sullivan says. “You’ve got 20 people out there, and you can’t do anything way out because if you do something they don’t like, they might vote against you. I’ve benefitted hugely from competitions, I must say. But I’ve never been very good at coping with defeat. I was a bit like John McEnroe – I wasn’t very good at taking the rough with the smooth.”
The jury is still out on the long-term effect of competitions on international pianism. In the short term, however, they’re exciting for audiences and competitors alike. And if the career paths of these seven prize-winners are any guide, winning the Brennan prize hasn’t compacted them all into a homogenous artistic box. On the contrary, the most striking thing is how many different directions their careers have taken.
Maria McGarry has been exploring the music of Messiaen, culminating in live performances of his mammoth two-and-a-half-hour- long solo piece, Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus. She was also the last pianist to work with the Romanian composer Horatiu Radulescu, and has been bringing his music to as wide an audience as she can since his death last September. Michael McHale has found himself at home in the recording studio; after winning many plaudits for his recording of piano trios with the dynamic young Ensemble Avalon, there's talk of a debut recital CD with EMI Classics. And he has just recorded specially-commissioned new pieces by Irish composers David Byers, Siobháan Cleary, Jennifer Walshe and Bill Whelan, one of which must be included in the recital of each semi-finalist in the Axa competition. McHale's interpretations will be broadcast on Lyric FM, in case anyone needs a few tips.
Cathal Breslin, meanwhile, has been learning Mandarin with a view to giving master classes in China, where he will tour in December. It sounds like quite a task, but being married to the Chinese-American flautist Sabrina Hu helps quite a bit, he says. He is also the artistic director of the Walled City music festival in Derry. Finghin Collins also has an artistic directorship, of the New Ross piano festival, and has been playing all over the place, including the Wigmore Hall in London.
Next month he’s off to Germany to play Strauss with the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie in Ludwigshafen; then there’s a festival in France, followed by a gig with the London Philharmonic.
Stuart O’Sullivan is preparing a massive programme for his recital in the National Concert Hall’s John Field Room in July. He has also become very interested in the areas of improvisation and composition, and has even written some pieces of his own as part of his in-depth dive into the whole business of musical creativity. Dearbhla Collins has developed a passion for working with singers, both in opera but especially in the song repertoire. And having decided against the idea of a career in music altogether, the winner of the first Brennan prize in 1988, Dearbhaile O’Donnell, has been working as an oncologist in a Dublin hospital for three years.
Does she regret having chosen medicine over music? “Well, I stayed involved in music all along, and I still play,” she says. “I did a festival in Italy last year. There’s an informal group of musicians and mentors I’m lucky enough to have got in with when I was a bit younger, and I still go to workshops and play and get advice, and perhaps give advice to some of the younger people.” It means that she sees first-hand just to difficult it is to make a full-time career in music, and how draining it is.
“There are frustrations and pressure and stresses in every job,” she says. “I think lots of things when I have a bad day, but when I come home I never think, ‘Oh, if only I were playing in Carnegie Hall’, because I know it’s not as simple as that.”
BRENNAN WINNERS CATCH THEM PLAYING
Cathal Breslin(2003 Brennan prizewinner) will play at Carnegie Hall in New York on June 26th. In August he will play with the cellist Raphael Wallfisch at the Cambridge festival; the concert will be repeated at the Walled City Festival in Derry, also in August. In September, he will do a six-date Music Network tour of Ireland with the cellist Gerald Peregrine.
Dearbhla Collins(1991 prizewinner) will emerge from an intensive stint of new baby-minding to do a Music Network tour in November with Celine Byrne and Tara Erraught.
Finghin Collins(1997 prizewinner) will perform Mozart's piano concerto No 23 with the RTE NSO at the NCH on May 1st to celebrate the 10th birthday of Lyric FM; he will also play at the NCH with the Korean cellist Han-Na Chang in a celebrity concert on May 6th.
Maria McGarry(2000 prizewinner) is working on a concert programme of Beethoven's last three sonatas, teaching at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and hoping to record Messiaen's Vingt Regardsby the end of this year.
Michael McHale(2006 prizewinner) will make his Wigmore Hall debut in June, and will play three concerts with the Hallé Orchestra in November. He will also give a solo recital at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester.
Stuart O'Sullivan(1994 prizewinner) will play Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt at the NCH on July 28th
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The Axa Dublin International Piano Competition begins on May 1st at the RDS. The semi-finals are at the National Concert Hall on May 9th and 10th, and the finals are at the NCH on May 14th and 15th. www.axadipc.ie