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Quick Facts
about the
Competition


Preliminary rounds in
New York
Besancon
& Beijing

 

18 conductors invited to
Besancon


Jury

 

Claus Peter Flor
Peter Csaba
Michel Decoust
Erich Gruenberg
Tamas Korner
Jan Willem Loot
Joseph W. Polisi


Ensembles for the
competition

 

Orchestre de Besancon
Orchestrae National de Lyon
Choeur Philharmonique de Prague

 

Besancon International Conducting Competition

Journal of one participant
I hope you will be able to learn from my experiences. As this site is also for my friends and families I have included journal entries which might not be interesting to everyone. I confess I am not a writer, in fact English is my second language. So please forgive me for my errors.


9.13 Monday

 

10:30 am
I leave for Waukegan for my first rehearsal with the community orchestra. I am the finalist for their music search so I'm doing the weekly rehearsals for the November cocnert, starting today. I spent the entire month of August studying for the competition and these rehearsals. They all happen at the same time.
4:30 pm
I finally arrive in Waukegan, what a drive! After a short chat with Dr. Schornick we head for a dinner. 7 pm I arrive at the high school for the rehearsal, on the docket, Beethoven Coriolan Overture and Dvorak Czech Suite. It goes well, but we are missing quite a few instruments; no violas, no basses, no bassoons, only one horn, no timpani, no trumpets.
10 pm
rehearsal ends
10:30 pm
I start my drive back to Ann Arbor. I have to catch a flight from Detroit tomorrow afternoon. I stop driving at 1am detroit time.


9.14 Tuesday

 

8:30 am
I leave Michigan city to continue my drive back to Ann Arbor, I am really tired.
11 am
I finally arrive in Ann Arbor.
1:15 pm
Tania gives me a ride to the airport
4:15 pm
NW flight for Newark leaves an hour and 15 minutes late. Hmmm, is
this how it is going to be?
6:40 pm
arrive in Newark
8:40 pm
Swiss Air leaves Newark on schedule. I try to study on the plane but I am too exausted to stay up, I sleep most of the flight to Basel.


9.15 Wednesday

 

9:30 am
We arrive in Basel. I take Airport bus #50 to the Basel Train station. Then I take Tram #2 to the Kunstmuseum then walk the rest of the way to the youth hostel. The walk is not too bad, when you are a struggling young musician you have to save money any way you can, especially in Basel where it costs you 2SF to go to the bathroom at the train station. I arrive at the youth hostel, it is surprisingly clean and quite. After a shower I actually get some studying done. After grabbing some bread from the hostel restaurant I am drift off to sleep.


9.16 Thursday

 

After a breakfast at the hostel, I leave the hostel to walk around the city, It is a beautiful city. 1pm I meet up with Johannes Schlaefli, whom I had met at a workshop before for advice and possibly studying with him in Zurich. The video I sent him is in NTSC and I must convert it to PAL system. I promise to do this as soon as possible.
7 pm
I venture a chinese restaurant, oy! Never try that again. After dinner I sit by the famous fountain in the city center and get some studying done.


9.17 Friday

 

I am getting antsy, I want to get there.
10 am
I leave the youth hostel, making a reservation for my way back.
11 am
since my train does not leave until 12:24 pm I bike around town for an hour. The bike is free, thanks to the city of Basel.
12:24 pm
board the train to Besancon
4:50 pm
I arrive in Besancon, I meet Madame Becque, we instantly recognize each other, well she recognizes me and I recognize my name which she is holding oup on a white card. During the short 10 minute ride to her house, I realize I am going to have to draw up every bit of my high school french to be able to communicate with her. She does not speak a word of English. This is actually what I was hoping for. I was hoping for a chance to practice my french. After settling in and having a quick but nice dinner, Madame Becque and Monsieur Becque and I had to the music hall.
8:30 pm
is the start of the concert but the roads around the music hall are jammed up with cars and people. At first I thought there was some kind of sporting event occuring at the same complex. There wasn't. Everyone was here for the opening concert. It was truly exciting to see all these people here for a classical music concert given by the home town orchestra, Orchestra de Besancon. The concert does not start until five minutes after 9 pm since people were still trying to get in at that point.

The program was

Brahms Hungarian Dances
Mozart Sinfonia Concertante for winds 1st movement
Mozart Ch'io mi scordi di te?
Beethoven Triple 1st movement
Mozart concerto for fl & harp 1st movement
then Dvorak Czech Suite. with Peter Csaba conducting.

I get home and study for about 2 hours then fall asleep.


9.18 Saturday

 

I get up quite early and get a good bit of work done.
3 pm
Helene the daughter of the Becque family is home for the weekend.
5 pm
we head over to the Kursaal, which is small recital hall for the first round. The meeting does not start until 5:45 pm we are here to draw numbers to determine the order of the 1st round. There are 18 conductors in all. Out of those 18, 4 are Americans. The youngest conductor is a 20 year old conductor from China. I think to myself when I was 20 I didn't know anything. Now I know how much I don't know. The jury is introduced which includes 7 members. The president of the Jury is Claus Peter Flor, German Conductor who is the principal conductor of the Dallas Symphony. Joe Polisi, President of the Juilliard school, Erich Gruenberg, Violinist from the Royal conservatory of music in England, Jan Willem Loot; the general director of the Concertgebouw orchestra, Peter Csaba the music director of Orchestra de Besancon, Tamas Korner, the director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and Michl Decoust, a composer who won the competition a while ago who is French. After the introduction we are asked to verify who we are by showing our IDs, like someone is really going to try to sneak in to the competition. Afterwards we are called up one by one to pick our number. When the number 1 spot is picked every clapps and sighs in relief. I pick #17 next to last. This means I will be conducting the orchestra at the end of the day at 10:55 pm after they have been playing the entire day. We are told we will not be able to watch any of the other conductors. We must remain outside the theatre until 30 minutes before our "passing" time. I return home and Oliver offers to drive me around the city of Besancon, I feel like studying a bit but I feel pretty good about my preparation and I really would like to see the city, so we go for a drive around the city for an hour or so, afterwards we eat like Kings, This family is so wonderful. By the time midnight comes around, I fall asleep.


9.19 Sunday First Round

 

Although some of the conductors conduct at 10 am I do not wake up until 11 am. I can not see them anyway so might as well, try to adjust my body clock so that 10:55 pm feels like 8 pm or so. At 2pm I have lunch with the Becque family. I study for a while then I chat with the Becque family in what must be awful French but we are managing to communicate thanks to Oliver and my frequent search through our dictionaries. At 4 pm Karen calls me, she is one of the American conductors I met at the first meeting. She asks if I am nervous. I consider the question and realize I am not. After I hang up, I start to think maybe I should be, then I chat some more with Oliver and Larence and I am fine. 6 pm We have a light dinner, then afterwards I take a walk around the old town center with Helene who points out all the monuments and all the double courtyards unique to Besancon region. We walk for almost 2 hours. I return home and I still have 2 more hours. So I study one last time then I head to the hall at 10:20 pm, it is only a 5 minute walk to the hall.
10:25 pm
I am led to a dressing room where on the table are three pieces of paper. I am told to pick two. The paper says Bartok and Milhaud. I am told to start with the first movement of Bartok then I will be told when to go on to the Milhaud. I am a bit disppointed in not getting to do the Kodaly Dances of Galanta as that was the only piece I had performed before in a concert of the competition repertoire.
10:55 pm
I enter the stage, I start with the Divertimento, the orchestra sounds really good! It goes very well. When I finish the movement the jury tells me to start the Milhaud from the beginning. My time runs out by the time I had reached the 5th rondo.
11:12 pm
I walk out of the hall where many of the conductors are smoking and chatting with each other. I join them to chat. I feel pretty good about my session but when I was at the Prokofiev competition in April, I felt very good about my first session also and I got knocked in the first round there. So I was quite content whether or not I would go on to the next round. I just wanted to do well for my first round. I think that's why I was mot so nervous.
12:15 pm
Jury announces they will pass 10 conductors to the second round. They start calling the names. My name is the last one called. Oliver who is standing next to me leaps up and yells. I stare at him and around me like a deer in headlight. I can't believe it, I am going to the 2nd round. They will keep the same order minus the 8 people. So my passing time is again late, 10:58 pm the next day. Now Karen and I are the only Americans left. I study until about 2:30 pm or so then fall asleep.


9.20 Monday Second Round

 

I wake at 11:30 am I shower and then eat lunch with the family. I am going to gain at least 10 pounds eating like this. I pretty much repeat my routine of yesterday of mixing studying and chatting with the Becque family and I again take a walk after dinner around the city, It is a quintessential french small town. I would love to live here. While I am walking I see a few judges eating at one of the side walk cafes, we are not allowed to talk to them so I pass by. I think to myself how lucky I am to have found the Becque Family.
11:28 pm
I arrive at the hall for the lottery. Tonight I am picking from four pieces; Debussy La mer, Shostakovich 9th symphony, Webern Passacagille and Martinu 5th Symphony. I pick the first three. Thus I will not get to conduct the Martinu. I am the last conductor to conduct in the second round, although I have not been able to see any of them Karen the other American, 1 Japanese conductor, 2 Chinese conductors, 2 French conductors, Estonian Conductor, Spanish Conductor and a conductor from Netherlands have all finished and are waiting out side the theatre.
11:58 pm
It is so late! Tonight's orchestra is Orchestra de Lyon. I start with the 1st movement of the Debussy. They play quite a bit behind the beat. I rehearse a few spots in the Debussy then I am told to move on. I conduct the Shostakovich 9th's first movement. At the 5/4 bar the snare drum does not play, so I go back to rehearse him, when I find out that the orchestra and I have different rehearsal system. I have numbers they have letters. OY! We finally find a spot to start and I finish the movement. I start the Webern. It is one thing if they play behind but it is not together and it is loud. I ask the orchestra that it must be together and it must be triple ppp as written. We start again, it is much better. I go pretty much to the end of the 2nd big climax, then my time is up. About half hour later they announce they will pass only 5 conductors to the semi final round. This time my name is called first. The five semi finalists are Naoki Tokuoka from Japan, Lukas Groen from Netherlands, Faycal Karoui from France, Alvaro Albiach Fernandez from Spain and me, now the lone American. I study for another hour or so before falling asleep.


9.21 Tuesday Semi Final Rounds

 

In the Semi final round all the five conductors conduct twice. First there is the opera round in which we conduct Stravinsky's Rake's Progress ACt 1 Scene 2 then in the evening is the oratorio round in which we will conduct the Szymanowsky Stabat Mater. I wake at 11 am, I am mentally and physically pretty tired. It would have been nice to take a day off, but this is a competition! After lunch I had to take a nap, otherwise I would fell asleep in the pit.
2:30 pm
I arrive at the hall. No lottery today. I am up first, unfortunately this means the orchestra will be sight reading. Apparently I was quite lucky to have gone second to last and last in the first two rounds since by that point the orchestra could play the music without any problem.
3pm
I step into the pit,
but before I do I am told not to stop, no matter what happens and finish the scene before starting to rehearse. I am in the pit the soloists and the choir are sitting on stage. I start the Scene, after only a few bars it is apparent that everyone is sight reading. I am cueing entrances in, holding off early ones, but we keep going. At the end of the act Shadow sings alone and is suppose to finish the act. I look right at him, for his entrance. He is looking straight back at me but not singing. I mouth his words, I finally start singing his part. We finish the scene. then I ask if there is a problem? shadow says he does not have the music. !?@#$!#@? Uh all right then we'll go back and rehearse a few spots. Later I found out that he thought the excerpt stopped before his solo at the end of the scene. He was provided with the rest of the music for the final three conductors. I return home take a shower and a nap. I wake at 6:30 pm thinking I do not have an ounce of energy left in my entire body. this is very physical and mental game, this business of competitions. I eat a light dinner, then look through Szymanowski one last time through, then head to the hall at 8:20 pm. I am led to the same dressing room, by the same German Girl Christie who has been a wonderful volunteer through the last couple days. she looks quite tired. There are many wonderful people who are working for the competition.I hear some very slow tempos going on through the wall. I am the second conductor to conduct the Szymanowski. The orchestra sounds unprepared.
9 pm
I am led back stage. As Naoki comes out he says, "Watch out for Orchestra." I walk on stage bow to the audience, then Claus Peter Flor asks me to start the second movement. Choir is very slow to respond. I see a lot of heads buried in the score. It is obvious many of them do not know their parts. I stop many times to regroup the orchestra and choir and the soloist. By the time my time is up, I feel quite frustrated about the level of preparation shown by the orchestra and choir. Many times I stopped simply to get people to be in the same place. I try to bring them in as I had done in the opera session, but his time it is much harder as many people are simply not watching me.
Afterwards, I sit in a cafe by the theatre talking to Naoki and Nicolas. Nicolas was one of the pianist who played for all the conductors in the preliminary round. He told me that he and Christine(the other pianist) played for 175 conductors in all. We have a very nice conversation about neglected French composers.
12 am
The jury announces 3 finalist for the final round; Lucas Groen(Netherland), Alvaro Albiach Fernandez(Spain) and aycal Karoui(France). Afterwards I come home and have a very nice conversation about many different things. For the first time I have trouble falling asleep since I have been in Besancon, I finally fall asleep around 3 am.


9.22 Wednesday I wake around 9:30 am to check up on email, I am definitely addicted to email! 11 am I have lunch with the Becque family until 2 'o clock or so. I am beginning to understand a lot more French and our conversations are becoming much more sophisticated. I found out about the Earthquake in Taiwan, boy I guess the world really is coming to an end. After lunch I meet up with some of the other conductors in the competition and then attend a Beethoven 9 Rehearsal by the President of the jury Calus Peter Flor in the Kursaal. For the first hour he worked with thesoloists, then after an hour the Czech noational Choir came in for their portion of the rehearsal. His guestures were quite forceful yet very musical. Claus was using the new Del Maar scores which he says are quite different than what he is used to. Afterwards Jose and I discuss two different types of conducting. One type of conducting which has a lot of energy and strong gestures or "more the better" school, and the another type of conducting in which there is an economy of gestures, almost inward looking. Both can be musical but for me, the latter is more about the music than about the conductor. Unfortunately we are not allowed to observe the finalists in rehearsal today. Each of the finalists had two 50 minute rehearsals for the Emura(Commissioned piece),Rhapsody in Blue with the soloist and Ravel's La Valse.


9.23 Thursday

I spend the morning observing the rehearsal of Beethoven 9 with Claus Peter Flor and the Orchestra de Lyon and the Czech National choir. I leave the rehearsal quite impressed with his conducting technique and his will over the orchestra. He set his tempo and eventhough the orchestra fought the many tempi(many were faster than conventional, I believe he was trying to follow some of the actual metronome markings), but in the end he got the tempi he was after. After a quick lunch, I was finally able to enjoy myself as a tourist with the Becque family. We drove out to their countryhouse in the Loue Valley. What a gorgeous place. Eventhough it rained, it just added to the beauty of the country side. We returned to the city in time for a quick dinner and to attend the Beethoven 9 concert. During the week the Ysaye quartet were performing the entire Beethoven String Quartet cycle. I wished I had had time to attend some of those, but I was busy with the competition. The concert as usual was completely packed. It was equivalent to a sporting event in the states. I was deeply impressed with the city of Besancon and their love for classical music.

9.24 Friday - Finale

During my morning walk around town, I saw Lukas sitting in one of the many cafes in town with his whole family; his wife, mother, and father. It was very nice to see them all. He says the rehearsals are going fine. In the afternoon, I occupy a place in a cafe by the river Doubs and study some scores for my post compeition gigs. I reflect on how difficult this whole competition would have been without my host family. I was truly blessed to have found them. After a wonderful dinner with the Becque family we head for the Theatre where the Finals are being held. Each of the finalist will conduct the exact same program of Emura, Gershwin and Ravel in the same order, and in performance setting, no rehearsals as in the previous rounds. The order of the finalists are LukasGroen(Netherland), Alvaro Albiach Fernandez (Spain) and Faycal Karoui(France). By the time Alvaro, the spanish conductor had finished the Rhapsody, it was quite obvious to me who the winner should be. Alvaro actually made sense out of the ultra complex piece by Emura. That was quite impressive. The Gershwin has pitfalls in which it can become yet another sound wall paper by United Airlines. Yet, Alvaro, with his sensitive accompaniment was always with the soloist. The E major "love theme" section was so musically played and conducted that it really was a pleasure to listen and watch. Alvaro turned the first three pages or so of the La Valse and after that the score was never looked again. Alvaro was too busy shaping and flexing time and communicating with the entire orchestra. All his gestureswere for the music and were not in the least bit distracting. I believe to pull off La Valse, one must keep the shadow of death at close hand. Otherwise La Valse just becomes a sentimental, nostalgic look back to the Viennese Schmaltz, uh ... I mean Waltz. The performance of the La Valse by the Spanish conductor Alvaro Albiach Fernandez was so electric, that by the half way point I had decided to actuall boo the jury if they did not select him as the winner. As soon as Alvaro had left the stage, the audience started to not only clap but clap in unison for Alvaro to take a curtain call. However, none of the finalists were allowed to get curtain calls. All of the audience members were given an envelope and three cards with each of the finalists name onthe color coded cards. At the end of the concert there was a box in the lobby for the audience to vote. After all three finalists had conducted it took the jury perhaps 20 minutes to decide. First the audience vote winner was announced, The spanish had prevailed. Then Claus Peter Flor made the announcement that the jury had also agreed with the audience. I was quite happy to see that the jury was fair in their decision.


I learned a great deal participating in this competition. Each time I got past a round, I was pleasantly surprised at my luck. The more I learn about conducting the more I realize how much I have yet to learn. Best part of being a conductor for me is the fact that I won't be any good or even close to decent until I will be about 65 or so. Until then I am on a journey to learn all that wonderful music and meet all those wonderful people along the way. I want to thank the Becque family for their frienship and generosity. I would also like to thank all my teachers for their wisdom and guidance, and thanks to mom and dad for their support of my journey to become a better musician.

 

  • Program/Repertoire

Preliminary Round

Stravinsky - Petrouchka v.1947 for four hand piano


1/8 Final

 

Kodaly - Dances of Galanta
Milhaud - Le Boeuf Sur le Toit
Bartok - Divertimento for Strings


1/4 Final

 

Debussy - La Mer
Martinu - Symphony No.5
Shostakovich - Symphony No.9
Webern - Passacaglia


1/2 Final - Opera

 

Stravinsky - Rake's Progress Act 1 Scene 2

1/2 Final Oratorio

Szymanowski - Stabat Mater


Final

 

Tetsuji Emura - Les Papillons de Lorenz, Creation (commissioned piece for the conducting competition, also the winner of the 1998 Composition Compeition)
Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue
Ravel - La Valse

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