Music Competitions

I found this topic very interesting and I would like to write some ideas from my own experience as a candidate and also as a listener.
Between 1997-2006 I participated in national music competitions and each time I won a prize-first, second or third with the flute. If this was essential for my development as a flutist I`m not able to say, but for sure it was a very good experience. First I was pushed by my teacher and later by myself to be concentrate and to give the best in a certain moment, the competition, and I believe that it was a very good training. Of course, I expected many times to be the best, but I don`t remember to be very disappointed when this doesn`t happen. So in my case, let`s say that beeing a participant in music competitions it was something neutral, maybe with a small positive influence in my future development as a flutist. Also the decision of the jury about the prizes it was not astonishing for me, it was almost the same, with one or two exceptions.
Now I would like to talk about the cases in which a participant is very good and doesn`t take a prize. This is totally unfair! It happens many times, I saw it many times but now I will speak about a recent situation from one week ago. The finalists of an international violin competition played  in the final a concert with our orchestra. The best from all 3 in my opinion and also others opinion received no prize! The question is why? And I have no answer. And the violinist maybe has no answer. This is the difficult part in this field. You can`t prove how good, how musical and how different you are sometimes. It`s a matter of taste, the taste of a jury in this case and the taste of the public other times. In my opinion, the jury is not completely objective from different reasons. First, there are teachers which try to sustain their students or have a clear preference for somebody else and second, they are concentrate on different things like mistakes, technique, the style of playing and less on the musician in itself. Luckily, the audience is more open and receptive to musicians. The public can enjoy an artist`s message through playing and is able to feel without looking for the mistakes or judging. We should be happy to play for the public and to give them our best. At the end, the public matters more than a jury from a competition. They can feel, enjoy and appreciate our performance!

Favourite pieces

As all of you, I have also my favorite pieces of music. Not all of them are from the classical repertoire, but I can listen the favorite piece 100 times or more with the same enthusiasm and without feeling bored. It put me in a very relaxed state of mind and recharges me with the positive feelings. 

The question is: why do we have this preference for some pieces more than for the others? It is a subjective perception, a matter of taste or it`s something more than this? It`s there a "specific technique" to compose this songs? Maybe a composer can illuminate us :-) I`m wondering because I saw on YouTube melodies for relaxation, meditation, for inducing sleep, etc... I was listening some of them but in fact I`m not sure if they really had the desired impact over me. 

Anyway, listening to my favourite pieces it always works and it helps me to change my mood and to relax in a way than no other activity can do it for me.