Introduction: Aiming for Israel

Enough reasons have built up to finally result in the launch of my blog. It seems that everybody is asking me to let them know how things go at the competition I'm doing in Israel this October, and I've decided this is the best way. There's so much to tell! This competition is not just about what happens in October, but everything that goes into preparing it. The reason I chose to entitle this blog "Beyond the Moment" (other than the fact that there's a big title area up there demanding me to enter one) was to emphasize that for every fleeting, seemingly effortless moment of performance, countless hours of all various kinds of preparation have been done to ensure that that moment comes across with just the right effect. This is my story of not just the moment of performance, but the real adventure beyond that moment.

In the interest of starting from the beginning, I'll introduce myself. Hello, I'm Elizabeth. :) I am a harpist – a decision undertaken as I was starting college and realized that I had been irreversibly enchanted by the harp and therefore had no choice but to major in it. According to my mother, my whole musical career began by tying shoes at the age of two, which gave her the idea that my fledging finger dexterity could be developed to do things even more interesting than tying my shoes. I don't remember this shoe-tying incident, just as I don't remember life without music lessons. I was lucky to have a really supportive family who raised me to appreciate the importance of music, even if they aren't professional musicians themselves. Over 20 years later I now have made it through the rigor of classical concert-artist training and have degrees from the University of Illinois' Music Department and the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris. I live in Paris, by the way! “Yes, I'm American,” I say to all the French people who can't quiet figure out where my accent is from. “Yes, I love living in Paris, and the musical environment here is great,” I say to all the Americans who ask. Really, my enjoyment of Paris depends on my mood. Some days it all just makes me want to scream. Most of the time it's wildly stimulating and exciting.

Having just concluded my formal education, I am now entering the International Harp Competition in Israel, which will take place in October. Learning to be a concert artist is done by facing a series of challenges – class recitals, then recitals of your own, local competitions, then bigger competitions... – each time learning from your experience, and then being capable of more the next time around. The competition in Israel is going to be the last big challenge of this sort that I give myself. I really want to be done with competitions for good after this, so I made sure to choose one that was completely off-the-charts ridiculously hard, just so I would really feel like I'd gone all the way, made the best effort possible, and would be justified in moving on afterward.

By way of introduction, the International Harp Competition in Israel (hereafter abbreviated as just “Israel”) is one of the most prestigious harp competitions in the world. Because it is the oldest of the most prestigious harp competitions, it could be thought of as the most prestigious. This is, however, the last time you'll hear me talk about it like that. I don't like the way that calling Israel prestigious implies that I'm prestigious for doing it. Prestige is absolutely not the reason I chose to enter this competition.

For those who don't know, I'll give a bit of an explanation of how the competition works. On October 6^th, about 30 talented, hard-working, and completely insane young harpists from all corners of the world will show up in Tel Aviv. We have known about the required repertoire for the competition and have been working on learning and perfecting those pieces for two years. The pieces range from solo works to small chamber ensemble to full, orchestral concerto, and they are all extremely, technically challenging.

There are four elimination rounds. The first round is a program of four solo pieces:

• a set of two Scarlatti sonatas

• a sonata by Jean-Baptiste Krumpholtz

• a choice between two pieces by Carlos Salzedo

• and a new piece commissioned for the competition by Israeli composer Yitzhak Yedid

Everybody will play in this round – everybody who actually makes it as far as getting themselves to Tel Aviv with the repertoire prepared – and it will take four days for the jury to hear everybody. Then follows the brutal slashing of about half the competitors off the list. Only those who pass the first round will play in the second round; the rest are finished.

With fewer people playing now, the second round takes only two days. It is also a solo round:

• a sublime baroque suite in c minor, by J.S. Bach

• a rich sonata and absolute staple of the harp repertoire, by Paul Hindemith

• a free-choice contemporary work, preferably something from the competitor's own country

• and the gushingly passionate Pièce symphonique by Henriette Renié

The jury subsequently dismisses another handful of bright, aspiring young stars and we're down to the cutthroat, chamber music rounds. In the third round the harp stands in for the violin in an arrangement, originally for violin, viola and flute, of a serenade by Beethoven and then creates a chillingly eery atmosphere for a musical rendition of Poe's Mask of the Red Death, by André Caplet. I'm convinced that this is the hardest round. The music is extremely demanding, very long, and you are put to the test not only for your skills as a harpist but your sensitivity to the other musicians you will have to collaborate with. This round is one of the reasons I chose this competition over all the other competitions I could have concentrated on instead: to make it past to the final stage (at least in my idealized vision of how this works) you can't just be a self-obsessed diva, you have to be able to listen and collaborate... in just three days of rehearsal.

The final round is the other reason I chose this competition: the Ginastera concerto!! This has been a dream-piece of mind for years, and I figured it would serve as good motivation to try to make it through the first three rounds. Only three people will make it to the final round. Once you're there, you're pretty much already on top of the world, and you get to celebrate by rocking out with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. To me, at that point, it wouldn't matter what the final results are. Just the chance to actually play that concerto with an orchestra decent enough to pull it off would be such an exhilarating experience that it would be worth all the sacrifice of the past two years.

In the end, the first-place winner receives a gold harp, which I also don't like talking about because it's also not my motivation for doing this competition. Much cooler is that the winner also gets a whole handful of debut recitals in fun places like London and New York AND a CD recording (probably of all the pieces that you just played in the competition, right?). Second and third prizes are monetary, and then there are a few special prizes for best performances of certain pieces in the course of the competition.

It's going to be an adventure. It already is an adventure. I'll try to share as much of it as I can with you here. Please stay tuned for upcoming posts on my thoughts and experiences during the final days of preparation and then, in October, news on how the competition progresses.