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A classic cult of virtuosity: the Sydney International Piano competition exemplifies a decline in Australia''s musical culture.

Article Excerpt
The classical pianist is a remote figure yet one which resonates strongly within the popular imagination. Often the figure of the pianist comes to stand for something more than simply the music. There are figures of erratic or eccentric genius, such as David Helfgott and Glenn Gould, as well as lone figures defending culture in the face of barbarism, such as Adrien Brody in Roman Polanski's The Pianist. Certain names conjure up images of the player--the brilliant but reserved Horowitz, or the quietly intense Stanislaw Richter illuminated on stage by only a single lamp--as much as they do the style of playing. The classical canon--arguably more constrictive than other artistic canons--invites an especially agonistic relation between performers. Having relatively few works to perform, pianists are judged in the light of previous interpretations. Perhaps the most devastating portrait of this hyper-competitive world is Thomas Bernhard's novel The Loser, where the talented pianist Wertheimer is crushed upon hearing Gould's version of Bach's Goldberg Variations. The novel ends with Wertheimer, torturing himself and others by playing Bach nonstop for days on a cheap and deliberately out-of-tune piano until his eventual collapse and suicide. As the narrator observes 'for a decade we study the instrument we have chosen for ourselves and then ... we hear a genius play a few bars and are washed up'.

Against such a rich background of individual heroism and tragedy, piano competitions have been a remarkable success--their numbers increasing steadily in the last three decades. The recent Sydney International Piano Competition was by no means atypical. Simulcast on...

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