Boris Giltburg, an Israeli pianist who won Belgium's Queen Elisabeth Music Competition last month, has mixed feelings about his victory. "I'm a bit angry at the world for not having come up with another way of discovering talent other than competitions," he recently told a Reuters reporter, going on to say that he would never serve on a jury for a classical-music competition.

Mr. Giltburg's comment attracted widespread attention—but it shouldn't have. The only thing surprising was that the person who said it had...