‘’Judging in the World Harmonica Festival 2017’’
Judging a high level musical competition is extremely difficult.
Music is art, but also science.
Judging a competition I would prioritise the scientific part over the artist part. Breaking down good music in a scientific way include calculating the note accuracy, rhythmic accuracy, dynamics changes, articulation (staccato, legato, accent, tenuto...etc), difficulty of the selected piece. If the contestant excel in all of the above, they are usually at the top of the chart already.
But when there are multiple players who are able to fulfil the scientific part, the ranking difference shall lies in the artistic part. Musical phrasing is one extremely prominent part. It could be a two bars phrasing, a 8 bars sentence or even the whole phrasing for the entire piece of music. Does all the small phrasing echo with each other after listening to a 8 minutes performance. Or are they disconnected and unable to convey a final general picture?
Musical style is a matter of taste. Hearing contestant performing my own composition this year certainly allows me to differentiate varies styles. Be it a technical approach like Franz Chmel, a classical approach like Wantani Yasuo, or a showy approach like myself, musical taste difference in the judicator is an inevitable form of bias. Even the most scientific judge in music has bias, because music is art. And therefore, having 5 judges of different tastes is extremely helpful in concluding a fair result. A balance was easily achieved.
As an advocate of harmonica competition, I do think because of competition, higher and higher level of harmonica players are arsing. Meanwhile it also function as an indicator for players to identify their level in the entire harmonica circle. Especially when there is no grading system for the harmonica yet. It is the most honest system we have currently to reveal every player’s’ standard.
I can’t be more excited to see more and more harmonica players in the world to shine outside of the harmonica circle when the standard keep rising.
Lastly, I appreciate every player’s who participated in the Test Piece Solo Category this year! Because of your participation, I believe it is still remaining the highest level of classical chromatic solo competition in the world currently. Once again, check out the winners this year. They are Ja Jing Lam ( TW 1st), Kelvin Leung Shing Hei (HK 2nd) and Pak Yue Leung (HK 3rd).
