Composing the Future and Reflecting the Present

The Sydney (formally the Sydney International Piano Competition), has once more run its course; congratulations to the first-prize winner, twenty-three-year-old Jeonghwan Kim.

Since 2016, the rules and regulations of The Sydney have been altered, allowing for more own-choice repertoire. Given the staggering volume of works written for the piano, one might reasonably assume that this opening of own-choice would lead 2023 competitors to perform a great(er) variety of works, but did this happen? The Sydney’s two preliminary rounds are both own-choice. Round One consists of a twenty-minute own-choice recital, featuring a minimum of two composers. Similarly, Round Two is a thirty-minute own-choice recital, featuring a minimum of two composers different from Round One. A seven-minute, twenty-first-century Australian work (or works) must be included in either Round One or Round Two. The Semi-Final rounds comprise a solo round and an accompaniment/chamber round. The solo round is a seventy-minute own-choice recital consisting of two or more pieces, and competitors are required to construct their program around a theme, offering verbal introductions to their pieces. A short encore must also be included and verbally introduced within the seventy minutes. The accompaniment/chamber round offers a choice from a set list of works and, in 2023, affords the competitors the opportunity to perform alongside a violinist or cellist. The Final Round consists of two concertos: one composed before 1800 and one composed after 1800; again, the concertos are selected from a set list.

This article looks specifically at Australian repertoire choices in the solo rounds for 2023 and asks: “Are these rounds truly representative of Australia’s contemporary piano music composers?”

A total of sixteen Australian…works were performed at The Sydney this year. This is not a lot.

In 2016, the year the Australian work went from being set from a very small selection (usually only two or three works which were commissioned expressly for The Sydney) to being own-choice, the Australian Music Centre (AMC) compiled a list of recommended composers and works, consisting of thirty-two works by twenty composers. The AMC, on the same webpage, also lists The Sydney’s commissioned piano works from previous years. This list contains fourteen works by thirteen composers. The AMC does acknowledge that their page is “only a small sample from the wonderfully rich Australian solo piano repertoire”. Perhaps the AMC should compile a recommended works list every year of The Sydney and recommend different composers each time. But, more to the point, the AMC is an inherent recommended works list because it is a catalogue of Australian works. This raises questions: is there an onus on The Sydney to direct competitors to the AMC so as to enlighten competitors on the breadth and scope of Australian piano works? Or, is the onus on competitors to search and discover, as part of their musical learning and expansion?

This year, The Sydney “encouraged” competitors “to explore the range of new Australian works entered into its 2021 Composing the Future competition for inclusion in their Preliminary Round Recital programs”. Twenty-eight works from twenty-five composers appear on this Composing the Future list. Is this list in any way indicative of the available options? Arguably, it is a good representation of Australia’s finest contemporary composers, although it is notable that not one competitor in this year’s competition decided to perform Composing the Future’s winning work, Colin Spiers’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

For The Sydney, the Australian work must also have a duration of seven or more minutes. To get a view of what is available compared with what was recommended in 2023, I used the AMC website to search accordingly. A search for “Solo Piano” works returned a result of 515 composers and 3932 works. Narrowing the search further to works composed in the 2000s results in 719 works; unfortunately, the results do not immediately state how many composers contribute to these 719 works—one would have to study the list and perform independent calculations. Of these 719 works, 196 are between six and fifteen minutes in length. Remember, The Sydney’s competitors must perform two works in the preliminary rounds, so we must allow for the Australian work being approximately either half of twenty minutes or half of thirty minutes. This number is, most likely, less, because the AMC search engine refines according to works shorter or longer than six minutes; our pool of 196 works is an approximation. One must also note that, of these 196, only 138 are considered to be of “advanced difficulty”, and eight of the works use either pre-recorded sound, live electronics or prepared piano.

Thus, for argument’s sake, let us say The Sydney’s competitors have a pool of 130 suitable, AMC-listed piano works to choose from. The reality is that the AMC is not an exhaustive index of Australian music; indeed, there are other Australian music houses and publishers that this article has (deliberately) not considered. The only list of recommendations seemingly proffered by The Sydney—the Composing the Future list of twenty-eight works—represents only 21.5 per cent of what the AMC intimates is available to competitors. It must also be noted that some competitors performed Australian works that are not on the Composing the Future list. If one includes these works and tallies the number of Australian composers that were performed—not merely recommended—there are five non-recommended (for want of a better term) composers and eleven Composing the Future composers. That is a total of sixteen Australian composers whose works were performed at The Sydney this year. This is not a lot. But it is difficult to gauge the representational accuracy of all this, because there are only thirty-two competitors in The Sydney to begin. Arguably, then, there can only be thirty-two Australian composers performed. In the light of this, perhaps The Sydney is without the capacity to accurately reflect Australia’s piano composers. After all, the limited competitor pool aside, there are a number of variables at play. These include each competitor’s research into Australian piano music, the competitor’s pianistic and musical strengths and personal tastes—not to mention the influence and guidance of their teacher.

All this raises three final questions. Should The Sydney do more to promote all Australian composers, given that hosting an Australian competition suggests the prerogative and responsibility to do so? Should The Sydney return to commissioning set Australian works, by different composers each time, as a means of not only engaging more Australian composers, but also of promoting Australian composers internationally? Or, in fact, is The Sydney first and foremost a piano competition, and thus is it counterproductive to mandate the inclusion of any works—Australian or otherwise—if the chief qualification of those works is their composer’s nationality?

Catherine Broadstock is an Australian concert pianist.

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