—A traitor to Classical Music.
No one knew when it had started.
Steven had grown accustomed to that title.
For twenty years, countless musicians opposed to the competition format had plastered that label onto him online.
As one of the greatest contemporary Classical Musicians, yet also one of the people leading the new format, perhaps being called that was only natural.
Steven lightly tapped the table, watching Lin Tian and Gan Yan Yu shine upon the stage.
Even as a spark lit up in his eyes, he let out a sigh in his heart.
But—
How could something as major as reforming the format be changed overnight just because someone said so?
It was like young lovers.
No healthy relationship transitioned instantly from friends → lovers. A single confession did not completely declare the beginning of a changed relationship.
Rather, before officially establishing the relationship, they already had the substance of lovers without the name of lovers. Only then would there be this formal "change" that confirmed their status.
The international competition format had been the same.
When the Council believed that the international format had to change—at that point more than twenty years ago, even before the reforms, the proportion of performers playing Pop Music in international competitions had already exceeded 50%.
Meanwhile, traditional Classical Music had become less and less popular because it lacked spectacle, its aesthetics were not mainstream enough, and its meaning was obscure and difficult to understand. More and more instrumentalists had chosen to turn to pop music.
Behind such a highly developed music industry, all the data showed that pop music was the genre more favored by young people.
The situation at the time had already become—
Whether to reform or not was no longer Steven's decision.
The tide of pop music surged in