It’s can be exhausting – chairing a competition. What is rewarding – a feedback from the teachers and participants that it means a lot for them to have a chance to participate and evaluate abilities and potentials. The opinion exists- competitions are bad. This is why I intended to established the event in two layers — Festival and Competition. But competition level is really challenging. Atlanta has great students, but it’s impressive to observe how they grow year by year on Romantic repertoire. Interpretations are getting more and more mature and emotionality revealed more vividly, as cannot be done in any other style of music.