The Audition That Launched a Career

It’s a scene easy to visualize. Two boys are trying to take piano lessons while their younger brother makes a pest of himself. The irony is that the kid brother will grow up to be the professional pianist. The others will become a chemist and a software programmer.

But another irony is at work here. Although Finland gave the kid brother--Paavali Jumppanen, who makes his California debut today at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall--an extensive music education, it was an American organization that is giving him an international career.

Those doors opened for him after he won the 2000 Young Concert Artists International Auditions. The New York-based organization--which distinguishes itself from typical competitions--focuses exclusively on managing the careers of up-and-coming artists. Alums include pianists Emanuel Ax, Murray Perahia, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, violinist Pinchas Zukerman, soprano Dawn Upshaw and the Tokyo String Quartet.

“The auditions are a link for us to the real music world,” Jumppanen, 27, said in a recent phone interview from Boston, where he was stopping before his Southland date. “You immediately get concerts, which is what this is all about. In competitions, some do a real fine job of taking care of people afterward. But some are more interested in just the event itself, which is also fine. YCA is a mechanism that leads to immediate results. To us, that is the most wonderful asset.”

The results are no accident. The nonprofit organization was founded in 1961 to provide bookings, publicity and career guidance until an artist is signed by commercial agencies, typically within three to five years.

“The purpose of our auditions is to find exceptional talent,” founder Susan Wadsworth said. “We don’t just have a piano competition. We hear all instruments, as well as voices, string quartets and trios. What we’re looking for is people or a group who, given the opportunity, actually have all the stuff necessary to have a viable career for the rest of their lives.”

Every finalist gets a $5,000 “first prize” award. Semi-finalists get a $1,000 second prize.

“It feels better in the outside world to say ‘first prize,’” Wadsworth explains. “At the Paris Conservatory, you have to win first prize to graduate. Everyone who graduates gets first prize. If they can do it, we can too.”

Wadsworth isn’t against other kinds of competitions, but she sees them as only a small part of the equation. “I encourage our artists to enter competitions if they want to,” she said. “It’s very stimulating. They have to learn certain repertoire. Being competitive is actually part of having a career. You have to have that desire to excel.

“But winning a competition sometimes just means they take the money and some engagements and that’s the end of it and nobody makes anything of them.”

Wadsworth happened into management. She studied violin and piano at the Mannes College of Music in New York but decided against trying for a concert career. She took a job at the United Nations and started thinking about a way to spotlight her Mannes colleagues.

“I thought it might be a great idea to present a concert series with these people who I knew were extraordinary,” she said.

The series--which took place at nights at a restaurant in Greenwich Village that would otherwise have been closed--included many artists who went on to major careers: violist Jesse Levine (now head of the string department at Yale) and pianist Richard Goode, for example, from the Mannes group. Wadsworth also booked solo flutist Paula Robison, pianist Ilana Vered and violinist Shmuel Ashkenasi, who founded and leads the Vermeer Quartet.

“I asked for contributions and started a nonprofit organization. It all seemed to click. Then I realized that this was not nearly enough to do for artists. Little by little, I just kept adding more and more things.”

The formal YCA Auditions began in 1965. “Now we’re just a staff of 14,” Wadsworth says, “all working our heads off, trying to keep up with everything we’re doing to help promote these young, fabulous artists.”

The program holds preliminary auditions in New York, although for the last seven years, they’ve also taken place in Leipzig, Germany, to make it easier for young musicians from eastern Europe to be heard live. (In October, auditions will also be held in Paris.) Musicians who live too far from these cities can audition by tape.

YCA pays for those winners, about 50 musicians, to go to New York for the next round. Typically, about 12 to 14 first prizes are given out. The age range is 16 to 26 for instrumentalists, 20 to 28 for singers.

The annual budget has grown to about $1.7 million. About $1.4 million of that supports the artists through direct fees, publicity materials and managing services. Funds come from individual sponsors, foundations, corporations and grants.

Not every audition winner winds up with commercial management, however. “There’s a plethora of brilliant young musicians emerging these days, and the managements already have large rosters of artists. It’s very hard to move them on,” Wadsworth said.

“Sometimes we have to just push them out of the nest if they have been here quite awhile and we feel we’ve done everything we can. Just finding themselves on their own often leads to something.”

Jumppanen agrees that sometimes “you have to swim for yourself.” He sees himself as a rugged, individualist Finn, and he’s not upset by that proposition.

“We’ve always been under [the control of] some bigger country,” he said. “But it’s always been at too far a distance to go ask how we should handle things. This independence is very much a good thing, even a little part in the psyche of a Finnish artist.”

He had shown that independence even as a child when he began pestering his brothers during their lessons.

“My brothers had this charismatic teacher, who had this very emotional connection with music,” Jumppanen recalled. “He was just an exciting guy who came to our house to sing and yell at my brothers for not practicing. I was always around, even when I was very little. The whole atmosphere was capturing. That’s why I started.”

Once captured by the piano, Jumppanen’s native talent emerged, aided by Finland’s extensive government-funded music programs, which nurture gifted youngsters from childhood to the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.

“I decided to go to night school so I would have more time to practice. My whole high school was in night school.”

He first earned major recognition after winning the top prize in the Finnish national Maj Lind Competition when he was 19.

But he stepped back to complete his academic studies.

“I felt I had to go back to school,” he said. “I played a little bit, but I wanted to make my education secure. I studied for three years. The next award was the YCA one. It came as a surprise.”

Since his win, YCA has booked 36 concerts in the United States for him. Boston Globe critic Richard Dyer called his technique “big and his imaginative daring even bigger.” New York Times critic Paul Griffiths wrote, “He performs with immense power and drive. He commands an extraordinary range of colors. His programming too suggests thoughtfulness and passion--and independence.”

Jumppanen cites YCA’s logistical support as important for getting such good notices. “In preparing for a concert, they’ve arranged everything around it,” he said, “dealing with the kind of details that have to be done in order to have the maximum energy and inspiration.”

As for commercial representation, “professional management is something that comes when the time is right,” he said.

At UCLA, Jumppanen’s program will range from the classical perfection of Mozart to the thundering virtuosity of Rachmaninoff, with Tchaikovsky in between. “I like to have a variety of styles within the same program,” the young pianist said. “I like to have contrasts that sometimes complement each other and sometimes are just cutting and don’t have anything in common.

“What I hope comes across: I only play the kinds of pieces that I’m really fascinated about that moment,” he continued.

“I just have to feel that I want to try this piece or style for a while, then go as deep as possible. Of course, you can’t go to the bottom. I want to change myself with every piece so that it doesn’t become an egotistic piece or a piece that [merely] suits me. It must fascinate me and change my life. I would like to have something of that come across.”

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PAAVALI JUMPPANEN, Schoenberg Hall, UCLA, Westwood. Dates: Today, 4 p.m. Prices: $25. Phone: (310) 825-2101.

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Chris Pasles is a Times staff writer.