Back

Jury Talk: Juliane Banse

Artists
Competitions

Chairperson of the Jury at the Joseph Joachim Violin Competition in Hannover, the renown Soprano talks about her thoughts and experiences

Few artists of her generation are as successful as Juliane Banse in so many areas of diverse repertoire. Born in southern Germany and raised in Zurich, the soprano first took lessons with Paul Steiner, later with Ruth Rohner at the Zurich Opera House, and then completed her studies with Brigitte Fassbaender and Daphne Evangelatos in Munich. Since the winter semester 2020/2021, she has been teaching as a professor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and in the winter semester 2023 she has taken over the direction of the singing class at the Escuela Reina Sofia in Madrid. She also gives master classes in Austria and abroad and participates as a jury member in international competitions. The artist worked with numerous renowned conductors, including Lorin Maazel, Kent Nagano, Riccardo Chailly, Bernard Haitink, Franz Welser-Möst, Claudio Abbado and Manfred Honeck. Lieder recitals have always been her passion and have taken her to the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, Wigmore Hall in London, Konzerthaus Vienna, Kölner Philharmonie, Berlin's Boulez Hall and Madrid, among others. 
This September, Juliane Banse has served as Chairperson of the Jury of the Joseph Joachim Violin Competition in Hannover, Germany.

WFIMC: You just finished a full day of opera rehearsals (for Manfred Trojahn´s “September Sonata” at Deutsche Oper am Rhein) and will do the same before going back to Hannover for the finals of the Joachim Competiton tomorrow night. How do you manage?

Juliane Banse: The schedule is rather tricky this week. The Competition had been decided long ago, but Dusseldorf decided last year to resume this production, so we had a way to knit both together. It´s a lot of music, but to be honest, this morning I thought “Wow! It´s nice to listen to singers again today, not violinists! It kind of frees your ears and prepares them for another round of violin tomorrow!

Violin is not exactly a foreign language for you and your family.

I am used to a lot of violin at home and I am actually glad that I played the violin myself for twelve years, otherwise I would have felt like a complete outsider. But this way it was very exciting. And I really like the concept to have not only violinists on the jury of a violin competition. 
Last year, I assembled the jury of the Mozart Competition in Salzburg, where I included Leopold Hager- a conductor among singers. Just think of the future audience of all these winners: a vast majority of this audience won´t be violinists, either! I find it very interesting to have people in the jury who listen a bit differently, even though that does not make the job any easier.

Recently, quite a few managers and opera directors have also found their way in competition juries.

Yes! Again, they will have a completely different perspective and will listen differently. But at the end of the day, I think, it should be the musicians who decide. It´s already a very stressful business for the competitors, and to have managers in the jury who look at an artist from a business point of view puts even more pressure on the performers.

Yesterday, when you announced the finalists on stage, you mentioned that it had been a very difficult selection.

I thought that it was good for the competitors to know that we were not all of the same opinion. In the end, it’s a democratic result, reflecting many different priorities in the jury. The jury should be transparent and fair, not act as if they were at a tribunal. But that is much easier to be said than done, because there is simply no objectivity in a jury: everyone has different opinions, everyone listens differently, everyone likes and dislikes different aspects of a player. You can decide a number of criteria, of course, but everyone looks at them differently.

Do you discuss the candidates in the jury?

There is no discussion on specific candidates, but of course you can sense some preferences just from how people react, how they look at others, roll their eyes, write a lot or very little, smile blissfully, applaud strongly or not at all….Personally, I asked musical questions every now and then, for example about vibrato in a certain piece. But what also matters was the kind of artist that the competition wants to find, as Oliver Wille and Antje Weithaas emphasized many times. It´s not about a perfect interpretation of a famous concerto. It´s about finding a mature, adult artist personality.
As a jury, I think you don´t simply judge a performance, you also have a responsibility for what happens later. The prize someone wins is not just a reward for what you´ve achieved in the past 10 days. It´s also something that gives a great boost to your career. But that boost doesn’t happen by itself- it’s a huge challenge. Sometimes you might not even be doing someone a favor by giving them an award right now- an award that comes with opportunities, but also expectations they might not be ready for. Sometimes a young artist needs encouragement, but also time. We had an age range from 16 to 31- this fact alone makes it really difficult!

Juliane Banse ©Elsa Okazaki

The Joachim Competition features not only a wide range of repertoire, but also several different disciplines: solo, violin and piano, performing as first violin with/in the Kuss Quartet, leading a chamber ensemble, playing solo without conductor, and playing a great concerto with symphony orchestra. Is it not hard to find someone who can perform perfectly in so many different situations?

The level was incredibly high. In the semifinals, pretty much after each and every player, we looked at each other thinking: “Okay, it just got once again even more difficult to decide!”

Were you happy with the decisions of the jury?

I think we came to fair decisions after all, even though there were some very different opinions. The voting system at the Joachim is dual, you both say yes or no to a candidate AND give percentage points. This helped later on to make some critical choices when we had a tied vote.
For me, it was amazing to see how almost everyone mastered the many different situations so well. You could of course tell who had done competitions before, who had played quartet before… Look, a competition is not a circus or sports event. Some competitions have to do so little with real life! But I really think Hannover offers a different approach, and that´s why I accepted their call to chair the Joachim Jury this year.

Can you give us some details of that different approach?

A lot of things have been solved very well. The two artistic directors are not on the jury, which makes everything very transparent and clean. The dual voting system works well. The numerous special prizes promise a lot of opportunities (sometimes I wish there could be more than three people in the finals!). There is no gender problem. And lastly, as I said- it´s a competiton with a realistic assesment of the chances and risks for the future of an artist. 
 

©WFIMC2024/FR
Title Photo: Juliane Banse (3rd from right) with jurors of the 2024 Joseph Joachim Competition (©JJV Hannover)