Cornell University
Rubinstein’s Nightmare: Pianistic Utopia and its Competitive Reality
In recent years, several of the largest piano competitions, including the ‘Van Cliburn,’ have faced major crises and subsequently undergone considerable restructuring. Their old business model, it seems, was no longer successful. A potential avenue in the creation of a new business model thus seemed to be a search for lost artistry and a return to 'the roots.' But what are the roots of piano competitions and how did earlier competitions contribute differently to the development of artistry and piano culture?
In the mid-1880s, the Russian pianist, composer, and (at times) philanthropist Anton Rubinstein drafted his plan for a competition for piano and composition. From 1890 on, this competition traveled, at intervals of five years, from St. Petersburg to Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and back to St Petersburg. The first international music competition, the Rubinstein Competition attracted composers and pianists from many nations in Europe and helped to launch their careers. Unlike many successor projects, it was designed as a cosmopolitan mission, even as it served to confirm Russia’s newly attained status as a major player in the musical concert des nations. Drawing on ethnomusicological work on popular music competitions and recent sociological work on classical competitions, I will compare Rubinstein’s project to several of its successors, examine its historical contingencies, and show how Rubinstein’s pianistic and wider-artistic networks differed from those of his heirs.
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Dietmar Friesenegger is a PhD candidate at Cornell University. His research interests include the musical culture of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, especially in its periphery and borderlands; aesthetics and musical competition during the fin de siècle; the musical migration from Central Europe in the 1930s and its impact on American culture. He is currently working on his dissertation entitled “Music and Civic Identity in Multicultural Habsburg Czernowitz (1861–1918).” Dietmar has co-edited the first edition of Hans Rott’s songs; published two articles on the composer in Die Quarte; and published an article on Protestant musical culture in Early Modern Austria in the series Leben in Leichenpredigten.