The Foundation - News

June 20-21, 2011

Shchedrin's „Concert Etude“ – a mandatory piece of the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition

The International Tchaikovsky Competition in Russia has a long tradition and is held once every four years since 1958. The competition is highly important to musicians, legendary for its demands on the art of interpretation and is a very significant step for those young artists who are extraordinary skilled to obtain worldwide recognition. In this year a lot of young musicians came again to Russia to show their skills in the disciplines piano, violin, cello and vocal in front of a top-class jury from some of the best artists of the world – e.g. Vladimir Ashkenazy, Nelson Freire, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Maxim Vengerov, Renata Scotto, Plácido Domingo and Van Cliburn.

The contemporary music is an inherent part of the competition and is therefore required from the contestants. To meet this requirement the Organizing Committee of the competition with its leader Maestro Valery Gergiev ordered from three of the world’s leading composers of modern time to write mandatory pieces that all contestants have to play in the semifinals of the competition - John Corigliano for violin, Krzysztof Penderecki for cello and Rodion Shchedrin for piano. Shchedrin, who has already composed mandatory pieces for several international music competitions, said relating to such an honourable und difficult task, that the composer must be in the position to create a piece, which would give the contestants the opportunity to show their extraordinary technical skills und their ability for dramatic feeling on the one hand without forgetting the expectations and demands of the composer on the other hand.

Shchedrin’s creation „Concert Etude“ - with its subtitle „Tchaikovsky Etude“ it refers to Tchaikovsky's „August“ from the „The Seasons“ - is a very virtuoso piece and quite a challenge for any pianist. Twelve contestants tackled this demanding task and presented twelve different interpretations of this piece. The award for the best performance of Rodion Shchedrin’s creation was presented to the twenty-five year-old pianist Yeol Eum Son (South Korea) – a multiple winner of numerous piano competitions and already an „inside tip“ among musical experts.