THE EXHIBITION COMPETITIONS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19688, 15 January 1926, Page 6

THE EXHIBITION COMPETITIONS.

TO THE EDITOR. S IJt While agreeing with your correspondent ‘‘One of the Audience” that judges should not always be accepted without comment—for anyone who accepts a public position lays himself open to criticism I cannot congratulate him upon the job he has made of it. Ho reminds me of a dog chasing his tail. What is he driving at? Does he wish to convey the impression that his opinion is worth something? If so, he is not very convincing. The reference to the accompanist is beside the point and altogether in bad taste. The judge obviously w a s nothing but complimentary, and rightly so. The comment in regard to the bass solo is hard to understand. Your correspondent seems to imply that the competitor who won should have been awarded more than 88 marks, or that The competitor placed second should have been awarded fewer than 86. The judge in this contest foolishly referred to Chaliapin. Now, this is ■ fulsome and benefits no one but the latter; but that, being the purely commercial aspect, does not interest us. The great Russian bass will be here next year if all goes well, and if there is any knoWledge in these folk who make such wild and utterly unthinkable comparisons, they will surely creep into their little burrows and stay there. These are the people who do great harm to the cause. If the naked truth must be told, the winner is not a bass at all, never was, and never will be. His is a baritone voice, and ho should have been ruled out as out of Ins class. Yet he won the bass solos and lost the baritone One can play a Bach Fugue on both organ and piano, but the fact of playing it on an organ does not make that organ a piano. Your correspondent’s remarks respecting the tenor solo are just stupid. Of course one point is sufficient to separate two i mpetitors. It does so in 75 per cent, oi cases at any competition. Granted there was a lot of room to criticise the judges at these competitions, and much of it could bo pointed, this sort of criticism that ‘‘One of the Audience” puls forward just serves to show him up as a muddled thinker. Though, to my mind, the judging right through left almost everything to he desired, your correspondent has not improved the unfortunate position one jot. Summed up, his position is briefly this ; He does not agree with the judge. Well, who cares? In this case I should say that certainly the judges did not know less than he, and that they will not lose much sleep over his letter. They have sins a plenty to their account, but ‘One of the Audience” has grasped the shadow and missed the substance. —I am, etc., G. B. S,