MOSCOW (AFP) - The 13th Tchaikovsky international music competition opened Wednesday in Moscow with the organizers hoping it will cast off the taint of corruption lingering over it in recent years.

A total of 196 participants from 13 countries will compete in four categories: piano, violin, cello and vocal.

The competition will be dedicated to the memory of the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who died in April.

Since its inception in 1958 the competition has revealed the talents of great pianists such Van Cliburn, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Mikhail Pletnev, Grigory Sokolov and Peter Donohoe.

The rules have been changed in a bid to win back the competition's previous prestige.

"The competition has lost 90 percent of its renown because of the shameful, fraudulent, biased and unfair behaviour ... of jury members at earlier competitions," said piano jury chief Nikolai Petrov in an interview on the competition's website.

He also lamented the absence of western European and US competitors with most participants coming from China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and Ukraine.

This year voting will be open and the points system has been abandoned. But Petrov acknowledged that jury members continue to put forward their own pupils as competitors.

The competition is held every four years, but to avoid a permanent clash with the football World Cup it has been delayed by a year as sponsors felt it would be overshadowed.