Pianist EJ Cruz adjudicates at HK Int'l Music Festival

Multi-internationally awarded concert pianist Jovianney Em-manuel Cruz recently returned from adjudicating at the Hong Kong Schools Music Festival (HKSMF) with 38 others from US, UK, Canada, Japan, China, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, and Poland who judged 148,000 Hong Kong musicians in hundreds of competitions. Cruz was the first and only Filipino to have been invited thrice to the 63-year old Festival.

According to Cruz, the Festival is the most organized, and perfect he has ever encountered; each Adjudicator was treated like a CEO of the Classical Music industry: the moment he got off the plane, a limousine drove him to the five-star Gloucester Luk Kwok Hotel known as the Nam Kok Hotel in the novel and film The World of Suzie Wong.

First day was a welcome reception hosted by the Association. After introduction of its members and Adjudicators, a four-hour briefing of the Festival’s process was conducted, encompassing competitions in Piano, Strings, Winds, Voice, Choir, Orchestra, and Chinese Music. Each Adjudicator was assigned 60 competitions — known as Sessions — for the five-week Festival. Each Session lasted roughly three and a half-hours.

For piano, the set pieces ranged from works approved by the Board (Grades 1-8), to 30-minute solo recitals, to concertos, and to works by the Composer of the Year (2011 marks the bicentennial birth anniversary of Liszt). There were around 60 contestants per Session, especially in Grades 1 to 6, while in Sessions for Grades 7 and 8 set pieces had 25 or less competitors. Although the solo recitals had only 16 competitors at most, an entire day of three Sessions was devoted to that particular competition genre owing to the length of the programs.

The Sessions were held in numerous venues around Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories. A car or van took each Adjudicator to his assigned venue for the day. Most days of his week were filled with only two Sessions, but there were days in that same week with three Sessions each which were “mentally draining”.

The task was not easy, despite the aid of an assistant. To choose a winner among sixty competitors playing the same piece within three hours was similar to finding a needle in a haystack. The Adjudicator was required to write comments on each competitor’s mark sheet to justify his marks on technique, interpretation, style, traditions, basic elements of playing the instrument involved, practicing, performance practices. There were even words of encouragement. Comments have had such value to competitors that Adjudicators were not allowed to write their signatures, only their initials. Prior to announcing the winner, the Adjudicator gave verbal comments to the competitors, their parents, and teachers. Cruz normally gave a 20-minute lecture, or a short master class on the competition piece, or on very special occasions, performed the piece for the audience. After a grueling three Session day, Cruz would soak his writing hand in a bucket of ice to relieve the pain from writing comments on 150 performances!

The standards differed. Some judged from a performer’s vantage point, others, from a pedagogical one. Cruz — a concert pianist, a professor in piano, and a winner of numerous international tilts — had a broader scope, pointing up the value of practising correctly and learning music in detail, adding that music cannot be discussed or interpreted if the basic elements are absent; that one can only become an artist if he is first a disciplined musician. Among the thousands Cruz heard, only a handful had something special to offer; one performance stirred him so passionately he was brought to tears.

Cruz’s biggest frustration is that the Philippines has nothing remotely similar to the HKSMF. He dreams that our government will do for the NAMCYA (wherein he won as a child) what the HK government has been doing for the HKSMF the past 63 years. Grateful for the Filipinos’ natural musical gifts, Cruz assures us that a fully supported festival would make our nation known to be that of Artists and not only that of entertainers.

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In my piece “Music and Friends”, I inadvertently omitted the name of participant Helen Aquino. My apologies. — RLO