Dear Jerry,
I agree with you when you say that I should present myself, and I am preparing a text to be posted before the voting rounds start so that people can know the reason of creating this competition. Believe me that this is a good idea that I had in mind despite having not told to do it by anyone during these years. Years ago I created the first Fidelio Piano competition beacause I really thought that it could be interesting to have a different competition than the rest, I mean, a contest in which the participants themselves could vote for the works presented without knowing the name of the authors or nationality. I mean, only vote for the music, just the music, and nothing else. I have alwasy thought that composers can also have a good opinion on music because they compose and live the music from inside. Of course, I also thought that it had to be compensate with some prizes and that I could get some money too with this idea. What is wrong with making money with a job in which I have made much effort and spent a lot of my time of hard work to prepare it all?. Due to the success of this piano competition I created the guitar one, simply because I thought that guitarists could like the idea of this kind of contest too. Always risking my own money and giving the prizes offered. Despite losing money during the first competitions I never gave up because I believed in this project and like listening to good music and indeed in the second competition I started to earn some money and receive good comments from participants for giving this oportunity to musicians of knowing other's compositions. Then I continued increasing the prizes and adding new interesting ideas like giving the oportunity of making comments on the participating works during the voting rounds, and I honestly think this is a success because most of participants make comments on the works during the voting rounds which I always sent to all of them via email after each round of voting. Apart I have received good comments towards this idea that according to some of them this is something they like a lot. I also created testimonials on the piano competition website so that people could read the participant's opinion on the competition. I mean, all this work takes a lot of hours of organization, organizing the voting rounds so that everybody can vote from countries far away. During these years I have increased the prizes and improved the websites by adding links to participants websites so that everybody can know more about the participants. I also sent the whole list of participants at the end of the competiton with names and nationalities so that everybody knows who they were competing againts. In this comments received during the competition many people say that would like to contact with the author at the end of the contest and in those cases I ask the author if I can provide his or her email address so that other contestant can contact with him or her. I know that this cannot be compared to a professional competition, this is quite clear but why not giving the oportunity to musicians to show their music to others through a contest like this? the good thing about internet is that there are many countries involved. More than 40 in the piano and guitar competitions I also organize. I believe that 10 euros to be paid in two or three months that last the subscription period is not much, it takes me many many hours to prepare it all, it's a very hard work that I do because I play guitar and love music and of course is a way of making money too but I don't do it for nothing, I also give money to the winners, a diploma, cd's and sheet music but especially what I am offering is the a new oportunity to show your own music to others and know music by other composers to whom you can exchange ideas through internet. I respect your opinion totally but I really don't understand well why saying things like "You just want to fill your pocket" when I actually give prizes to the winners. The first accordion competition I offer as much as I can because I don't know the response but if it works well, I will increase prizes as I have always done with the other competitions. You are free of course to take part or not by I don't understand this way of talking badly about this idea instead of not entering, that's all. Thank you for telling me about the idea of presenting myself in the website if you believe this is so important. I honestly think that you are right and it's a good idea. I am totally open to receive new ideas that can make to improve it all. I apologize for my english mistakes too. I am Spanish.
