WHY PIANO COMPETITIONS WILL NEVER YIELD A SUPERSTAR

“Why are music competitions so bad at singling out potentially major artists? Because the winners are chosen by juries. A jury is at bottom a committee–and a committee, as John le Carré famously said in ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,’ is ‘an animal with four back legs.’ They exist to generate and perpetuate consensus views. They can’t make great art, and it’s all but impossible for them to agree on great artists…”