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Music competitions are probably as old as music itself. In the tales of ancient Greece the satyr Marsyas competes with the god Apollo, musical competitions were part of the Olympic Games in Ancient Greece, and concert music as a genre developed from competitions among musicians during joint performances. But the oldest music competition that has survived to this day is the Fryderyk Chopin Competition held in Warsaw, started as late as 1927, followed by the Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition established in 1935, again in Warsaw. After competitions in Brussels, Paris, Geneva and London, in 1947 an international competition was organised as part of the Prague Spring Festival and would ten years later become one of the founding members of the Federation of International Music Competitions.
At present there are more than fifty music competitions organised in the Czech Republic on an annual basis, or sometimes in longer intervals. Alongside national competitions for students of the foundational music and art schools, Conservatoire students, school choirs and various local competitions, a good half of the total number of competitions involve competitions that are in at least certain aspects international, and their number is growing.
Alongside the Prague Spring competition the longest-standing among the Czech competitions are the Chopin competition in Marianske Lazne and Beethoven's Hradec in Hradec nad Moravici, founded in 1962, Smetana Competition founded in 1963 in Hradec Kralove, the Dvorak Competition in Karlovy Vary founded in 1966, and its contemporary Concertino Praga, dedicated to young musical talents. In many cases, several years later the laureates of Concertino Praga will become the laureates of the Prague Spring Competition.
The overview that follows is meant as to provide orientation among the large number of contemporary Czech music competitions where foreign candidates are allowed to compete. The majority of these competitions are annual, and the festival dates are almost without exception fixed. We mention the periodicity of competitions on in the case of those that take place at longer intervals than a year. For most competitions you will find more detailed information, such as the competition regulations, complete lists of past prize-winners etc. on the Internet pages of the competition concerned, for which we provide addresses.
The Prague Spring International Music Competition
Founder member of the World Federation of International Music Competitions (WFIMC)
The idea of organising an international music competition to accompany the Prague Spring Festival was the brainchild of the conductor Rafael Kubelik and members of the Czech Philharmonic in 1946. That same year the rules for the Jan Kubelik Violin Competition prize were drawn up. The first of these competitions took place in May 1947 as part of the Prague Spring International Music Festival. The honorary president that year was Jan Masaryk, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Czechoslovak government.
Since then, the Prague Spring International Music Festival Competition has taken place each year, almost without exception. Most frequently it is devoted to performances on a selected instrument: standard symphony orchestra instruments excluding the bass instruments, followed by piano, organ, harpsichord, string quartet, conducting and solo singing. Composers were included in the competition on two occasions. The competition always takes place in early spring, prior to the commencement of the Prague Spring Festival and its finale is included as a concert at the Festival. The jury generally comprises seven members, with Czechs in the minority. In the course of the sixty years of the Prague Spring Festival Competition the jury has included outstanding artists from all parts of the world (David Oistrach, Vaclav Holzknecht, Karel Pravoslav Sadlo, Paul Tortelier, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Alois Haba, Hans Haselbock, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Angelica May, Josef Suk, Philip Jones, Rudolf Firkusny, Lazar Berman, Vaclav Neumann, Rafael Kubelik or Jorma Panula).
The competition laureates have included, among others, Mstislav Rostropovic (1950), The Smetana Quartet (1950), Jan Panenka (1951), Stefania Woytowizova (1954), Sona Cervena (1954), Boris Gutnikov (1956), Zdenek Bruderhans (1959), Vera Soukupova (1960), Natalia Gutman (1961), Natalia Sachovskaja (1961), Grigorij Fejgin (1964), Ivan Straus (1964), Boris Tiscenko (1965), James Galway (1968), Maurice Bourgue (1968), Zdenek Tylsar (1968), Boris Pergamenscikov (1970), Michel Becquet (1978), Dagmar Peckova (1986), Philippe Cuper (1986) or Martin Kasik (1998) and others.
Since 1994 it has become a tradition that the Prague Spring commissions a notable Czech composer to contribute a composition that becomes mandatory for each competition category. Apart from the main financial prizes, laureates receive prizes from various institutions (such as the Czech Music Foundation, Zivot umelce Foundation, Gideon Klein Foundation, Bohuslav Martinu Society, Gustav Mahler Society MAHLER 2000, Antonin Dvorak Society, Barenreiter publishing house, Czech Radio, Galerie Miro, Moser glass company etc.).
Apart from the financial prizes a plethora of paid concert performances at a variety of international festivals and subscription series of both Czech and international orchestras are offered to the laureates. For competitors the chance to perform at the next Prague Spring Festival is understandably a major reason for entering the competition.
Tel.: +420 257 313 033, Fax: +420 257 310 414, E-mail: competition@festival.cz
Competition Secretary: Jarmila Nedvedova, nedvedova@festival.cz
Web: www.prague-spring.net/competition
62nd year: 7th-15th May 2010, categories: violin, trumpet, age limit: 30 years
63rd year: 7th-15th May 2011, categories: piano, trombone, age limit: 30 years
applications are accepted until the 15th of December of the year prior to the competition
International Music Festival Brno. International Performers' Competition
In Brno, the main metropolis of the Moravian region of the Czech Republic, regular festival events began in the 1950s with the founding of the Brno Music May, which was in many respects only an offshoot of the Prague Spring Festival. This is why it was replaced in 1966 by the autumn International Music Festival, accompanied from the beginning by regular musicology colloquia and from 1967 also by an international competition for radio music programmes, Prix Musical de Radio Brno, which lasted until 1992. In the course...
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