Thanks to the Adams Foundation, I had the fortune to visit Providence, RI (for a non-Smackdown recital) and Elon, NC. My visit to Elon was a great pleasure - to discover this beautiful campus, to play in the wonderful auditorium, to have met enthusiastic people, and to have played one of the rare DCFX pianos (one of two in existence!).

I was particularly pleased that the audience was so diverse: average age was 40, with 40% of the audience under 21 years old!

Results: Debussy, winning by a (flaxen!) hair, 47% to 46%, with 7% tied.

Breaking it down by individual rounds:

Round 1 - Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque edged out Lt Kije, 51%-48%

Round 2 - Debussy’s L’isle Joyeuse solidly favored over Prokofiev’s Sonata #3 66%-33%

Round 3 - Prokofiev’s variety easily won over Debussy 57%-41%

Round 4 - Prokofiev’s Toccata cinched it for many people 56%-42%

Men preferred Prokofiev, while Women were in favor of Debussy.

            Men                        Women

From an age perspective it was a real roller coaster! Under 21 strongly preferred Prokofiev, 21-40’s preferred Debussy, 41-60’s preferred Prokofiev, and the over 60 crowd overwhelmingly preferred Debussy! Who can give me some insight into how those numbers played out?

                <21                        21-40                            41-60                        >60