Pallas As promised, now that I'm properly wined up and starting my weekend, some thoughts about the competition and my experience there.
Context: this is only my second amateur piano competition, after Paris earlier this year, so my experience is fairly limited.
The competitions
The level of organization at Boston was on a completely different level compared to Paris. Paris had no confirmation of application. No confirmation of acceptance until the program book was sent out. No practice rooms provided. No livestream/recordings. No master classes. No jury feedback.
Jury feedback in particular is worth its weight in gold. In Paris, I left completely unsure what I should work on. At Boston, they had dedicated (if short) jury feedback sessions, and at least one of the jurors was kind enough to offer to give feedback during the awards reception as well for anyone that hadn't been able to talk to him previously. I actually paid a change fee to move my flight home 1 day later so I could stay for the reception and get feedback from him, and I don't regret it.
It was easier to connect with people in Boston as well vs. Paris, and not just because I can't speak a word of French. At Boston, everyone's all around Longy most of the time since the master classes and practice rooms are also there, there's places to take a break without leaving the premises (honestly, napping in a random alcove surrounded by the sounds of people practicing brought me back to my college days half a lifetime ago), and there's a default go-to dinner spot afterwards every night that makes it easy to meet other participants and organizers (even if the Nubar staff doesn't like to split checks more than 2 ways for some inexplicable reason in 2024).
This may sound like I'm pretty bearish on Paris, but that's not the case at all. They're just really disorganized lol, but my experience there was still very valuable (and honestly I hadn't planned on going to Boston until I had a good time at the Paris competition!).
You really get the sense that different competitions have different personalities and approaches to music. For example, Paris seems to optimize for a finals program that shows off the best unique qualities of each of its finalists over a more broad polish across multiple musical eras, while one regular competitor told me that Warsaw (Chopin) tends to be very traditionalist in terms of absolute fidelity to the score and doesn't really like adventurous programming (so possibly a bad fit for me lol). It just reinforces the lesson I got from the only juror who liked my playing in Paris: when you go to a competition, expect nothing — and be happy.
Other thoughts
And I am happy about both Paris and Boston despite my lack of external accomplishments heh. When I first decided to try an amateur competition this year, I thought I would try one and decide I didn't like them because of the additional constraints around programming and because I mistakenly thought that competitions rewarded safe but boring play. But besides the fact that preparing for competitions has elevated my own playing, I discovered that competitions also had a lot to offer outside of prizes.
Hearing things like "I've never heard that Clementi sonata before but now I want to play it!" or "I've heard Price before, but you made me like her work" from fellow pianists is probably worth more than any competition prize I'll ever win.
Discovering the amateur piano competition community has also been incredible. Everyone is so supportive and generous with their time and energy. The 2022 Boston winner Gorden Cheng not only volunteered to cut all the videos and send them to the individual participants, but also took the time to listen through my performances and provide additional feedback since I hadn't gotten to talk to all the jurors. My fellow participants came from so many different backgrounds but at the end of the day we all love the piano so it was easy to connect — I can't wait to see them again.
I definitely plan to continue competing in amateur competitions. I was inspired so many times last week — Robin's Liszt Ballade No. 2 lives rent-free in my head, remembering Jeff and Shiori's expressions while they play brings a smile to my face, and I'll always treasure the memory of Robert (despite being exhausted from organizing the competition) taking the opportunity to play on that lovely Bösendorfer 280VC in a quiet moment between rounds, in his own little world with no audience, cane and age forgotten at his side.