ShiroKuro How many competitions have you been in as an adult amateur? How did you get into this competition activity? Did a teacher introduce it to you?
This is my third amateur competition. I started competing this year with Paris (March) and Boston (June) before WIPAC (August). I have been aware of the existence of amateur competitions for a while, but tended to read about them and then forget for a couple years.
About two years ago, I started going to regular piano meetups. These became a great motivator for me to learn new music and practice more so that I could play for other people. Eventually, after one of my meetup performances last year, one of the organizers asked, "Do you compete? Because I think you'd good at it!" to which my response was "Huh. I've never thought about it." But I started researching competitions again, and shot off a question to my old teacher about the idea of competing. He responded that "[competitions] are a great motivator and would really allow you to focus your practice. You should set that as a goal." So I thought about it some more and basically went:
twocats My understanding is that works don't have to be memorized? Does everyone memorize anyway and would it have been easier if you had a score?
Yes, none of the amateur competitions I've looked at require memorization. Many high-level competitors use scores, whether digital tablet with a page turner pedal or the old-school way with printed score and human page-turner. As an example, 6/12 semifinalists and 2/6 finalists at WIPAC this year used a score for at least a portion of their set (I like compiling/recording this sort of stats so I'll usually make a note in my program book as I listen). For some, they've memorized it but value the sense of security the score provides; on the other hand, I've heard competitors note that they should have trusted their memory more because they spent too much time looking at the score instead. And of course, using a score only trades the risk of memory-related mishaps for the risk of score-related mishaps (accidentally turn too many pages, score falls down, etc.). For me, I tend to memorize tonal music before I can play all the notes, so it's a bit of a moot point for now.
twocats I know a local woman who participated in the Van Cliburn amateur competition many years ago (she didn't expect to advance, but just preparing to go is quite an accomplishment). She ended up meeting her now-husband there!
While I started going to piano meetups/competitions to meet piano friends, meeting a piano wife sounds pretty nice too šš¼šš¼ I'm definitely shooting for the next Cliburn amateur competition in 2028 if they'll accept me!