Karen Knowlton had been the primary organizer and executive director of the Robert Casadesus International Piano Competition since the late 1980s. She was not a voting member of any board or committee, but she was dedicated to making the competition successful and to promoting the careers of its winners. On May 6th, 1994, Karen made a long, impassioned speech at a meeting of the board of trustees. The gist was this: “I have no argument with perpetuating the memory of Robert Casadesus. But I have trouble myself when that goal is more important than serving young people and building interest in classical music.”
There’s a hint of irritation in Karen’s statement, and it does not come as a surprise. Letters, faxes, and board minutes from the first half of the nineties are almost all tinged with similar frustrations. When she made this speech, the relationship between the Cleveland-based Friends of the Competition and the French family who founded the event were actively imploding. Although no one ever blatantly stated it, the root of the tension is clear to anyone who reads the documents: it was ownership of the competition—who had the right to make decisions?
Here are the two sides:
1.
The competition bore the Casadesus name. It had been created in memory of their deceased and beloved patriarch, Robert, and its express purpose was to honor his memory and pianistic values. Since the mid-1970s, the family and their loyal friends had made decisions that guided the competition towards the success it experienced. Gaby Casadesus was not only Robert’s widow, she was a renowned soloist and pedagogue herself with the expertise to make repertoire selections and to sit on the jury. The competition was not the property of Cleveland or of CIM: it was an event organized by The Robert Casadesus Society. In their opinion, it was only natural that the competition was theirs to make decisions about and that it should remain so.
2.
The French may have made decisions, but the Clevelanders executed them. Since the competition’s founding, people who lived in Cleveland had taken on the responsibility for making the event actually happen. They helped with plans, but they also fundraised, coordinated, sponsored, and hosted every round. They wanted the competition to inspire and relate to its local audience and to seek to do its best to promote its winners’ careers. In the Clevelanders’ opinions, the competition didn’t belong to them, but it should have.
The conflict intensified as the competition grew. There was constant miscommunication about the structure of the administration, who paid for what, and who implemented what. Although the Robert Casadesus Society theoretically owned the competition, it had never set an official apparatus in place to administer it or fundraise for it, and they could not afford the cost. Almost every year there was a shortfall. Once CIM started refusing to bail them out, their only dedicated patron, Odette Wurzburger, had to cover their debts.
In fact, one of the reasons Karen and Martha wanted to start the Friends of the Competition in the early 1990s was to help with that shortfall. The Friends were made up of Cleveland-based patrons and audience members who wanted to be more involved. Within the first six months, the brand-new organization was able to raise $21,000, and that number only increased over time. But even this success seems to have fed resentment among the founders, who thought that $21,000 was not enough to give the Friends decision-making power.
It’s hard to pinpoint the beginning of the end, but after the fiasco of 1993, there was no going back (you can read more about this is the previous blog post). Some members of the Friends had written letters speaking out against the jury, which the family seems to have taken as a personal insult. It makes sense—Gaby sat on the jury and chose many of the jury members herself. Letters and articles from the moment reek of mistrust in both directions, showing that the divide had widened. What was once disagreement and frustration had become a total lack of confidence. Ultimately, this mistrust led to an exodus of the founders.
Unfolding the breakup is sometimes challenging, since we have only a few copies of letters and documents written by the family. But for the most part, all a reader needs to do is piece through the archives bit by bit. You can see for yourself how quickly things went sour in mid-Autumn of ‘93:
October 26, 1993: David Cerone (then president of CIM) sends a letter to Odette Wurzburger (a close and loyal friend of Gaby Casadesus and the competition’s central donor). His letter reflects on a conversation the two of them apparently had the day before. In just one part of the letter he writes, “Odette, please believe me when I say how very much I understand and appreciate the extraordinary contribution of time, energy, concern and financial resources you have so unselfishly devoted to The Casadesus Society and to The Competition… Yours has been an inspirational example of what loyalty, duty and subscription to excellence can bring to an endeavor. I call you, my dear, a miracle!” (Underlining is original.) In the postscript, he explains that he’s attaching an article related to their discussion. It is still attached in our archival copy. “Family-owned business should plan for succession” (The Plain Dealer, Tuesday, October 26, 1993).
October 31, 1993: David Cerone, Martha Joseph, and Sergei Babayan (the 1989 CIPC first prize winner who was asked onto the jury for 1993) are interviewed for The Plain Dealer, and in the article “Casadesus Piano Competition Nees a Tuning Up,” the music critic Donald Rosenberg discusses what they see as “chinks in the Casadesus armor.”
November 1, 1993: Odette writes to Gaby. In it, she says she is enclosing “A letter of flattery to me from David Cerone… with an attached clipping from The Plain Dealer” and “an interview with Sergei Babayan made by the Music Critic of The Plan Dealer, Donald Rosenberg.” The dates are the same as the last two entries. “I have to write to you in English for all the reasons you know… For the time being, there is nothing to do but keeping quiet until we meet.” The article about family businesses (cited above) may have struck a wrong note with the family in quotes like, “It is a challenge for family members to differentiate their roles in the family and the business,” or, “As human beings, we are notorious for ignoring our own mortality and persisting as though conditions will never change.” Odette writes that the family has demanded a signature card for the competition’s financial accounts so that no money could be withdrawn without Therese Casadesus Rawson’s (Robert’s and Gaby’s daughter’s) consent.
November 1, 1993: Odette writes a very short letter to Grant Johannesen (one of the competition founders), reporting that “The unpleasant sage is going on.” Here, it seems that the “old guard” was already aware of what was happening—they felt like they were being “saged” from the competition.
November 2, 1993: Odette writes a curt letter to Martha Joseph, requesting that she make a payment to their lawyers and saying that she’d like Martha to acknowledge one of Odette’s recent donations. In the letter, she seems to be angry that Martha had yet to acknowledge it.
In these exchanges, you can see a few things. For one, the press played a huge role in the breakup, continually driving a wedge between the groups. Second, the Clevelanders believed that there was a way to work things out, but that significant changes were needed. And third, the founders were keeping each other informed of what they saw as offenses, working their way from frustration to annoyance (or potentially anger).
Between November 1993 and January 1994, things got quiet. Maybe they all took a break for the holidays, hoping that returning to the conversation in January would bring a fresh perspective and release some tension. Unfortunately, things only seemed to get worse.
Stay tuned for part two of the breakup blog.