The Edinburgh Competition Festival: Highlights Concert and Concerto Class Final

St Cuthbert’s Church, 12/03/23 

A large and receptive audience turned up in St Cuthbert’s Church on Sunday 12th March for the Highlights Concert and Concerto Class Final, organised by the Edinburgh Competition Festival Association. Having celebrated its centenary in 2020, this excellent Edinburgh institution has been a fixture of the city’s musical life for as long as I can remember, and indeed I participated myself, and won a prize, nearly 50 years ago. 

The concert showed off, to an admiring public, some of the fine performers from this year’s competition in the Highlights section, and also allowed the four finalists in the Concerto Class to perform in a concert situation. Furthermore, the pronouncements of the adjudicators and the awarding of the Prize, allowed the audience to gain some understanding of the intricacies of the decision-making process. 

The four contestants were Raj Bhaumik, Tom Robertson, Dida Condria and Alexandru Placinta. The Orchestra of the Friends of the Festival (led by Paul Jourdan) was conducted by Vincent Wiguna. The Festival had engaged the distinguished musicians Susan Tomes and Fiona McLean Buechel as judges and they were unanimous in their decision to award the Audrey Innes Trophy to Dida Condria (pictured below) for her splendid performance of the 2nd and 3rd movements from Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto, one of the great pianistic challenges of the whole repertoire.

The Competition Festival tends to fly slightly under the radar of Scottish music, which is a shame, and after over a hundred years of competition, it surely deserves to be brought into the limelight. I am not usually a great fan of musical competitions, as the music profession is not a competitive environment but far more a collaborative one. However, some competitions have their place, and they can be very useful in indicating new talent. Often it is the runners-up who rise to the top, and so those musicians who didn’t win should not be disheartened. This is where the ECF is particularly important, as each competitor receives a full adjudication report, which they can use to improve their skills for the future. In addition, the Association run several non-competitive classes for all instruments and voices, with full adjudication but no prizes, and these have proved very popular with entrants and their teachers. This is an aspect I warmly endorse, as it can give musicians an idea of where they stand vis-a-vis their peers, without the stress of competition. 

I am already looking forward to the 2024 Festival.   

Cover Photo: John Cowie