International Chopin Piano Competition

International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition
Current: XVIII International Chopin Piano Competition
The National Philharmonic during the 2005 competition
Venue	National Philharmonic, Warsaw
Presented by	Fryderyk Chopin Institute
First awarded	1927 (1927)
Last awarded	2021
Website	konkursy.nifc.pl/en

The International Chopin Piano Competition (Polish: Międzynarodowy Konkurs Pianistyczny im. Fryderyka Chopina), often referred to as the Chopin Competition, is a piano competition held in Warsaw, Poland. It was initiated in 1927 and has been held every five years since 1955. The competition is one of the founding members of the World Federation of International Music Competitions. It is also one of the few competitions devoted entirely to the works of a single composer, in this case, Frédéric Chopin. The competition is currently organized by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute.

The Chopin Competition is one of the most prestigious competitions in classical music, often launching the careers of its winners overnight through major concert dates and lucrative recording contracts. Past winners have included Maurizio Pollini (1960), Martha Argerich (1965), Krystian Zimerman (1975), Yundi Li (2000), Rafał Blechacz (2005) and Seong-Jin Cho (2015). The most recent winner has been Bruce Liu of Canada in 2021. Yundi Li is the most well known for being the youngest first prize winner and the youngest juror in the competition's history.

History

3rd Chopin Competition (1937). Among members of the jury (sitting on the left) Heinrich Neuhaus, Emil von Sauer, Guido Agosti, and Wilhelm Backhaus

The competition was initiated by Polish pianist and pedagogue Jerzy Żurawlew, who began seeking funds for a piano competition in 1925, influenced by Aleksander Michałowski. Żurawlew recalled later: "Young people at that time, not long after the end of the Great War, were taking a keen interest in sports. They were dyed-in-the-wool realists in their outlook on life. I would often hear that Chopin was excessively romantic, that he enervated the soul and weakened the psyche. Some went so far as to discourage the inclusion of Chopin as required repertoire in music schools. All that showed a fundamental lack of understanding, which I found very painful... As I watched young people’s enthusiasm for sporting achievement, I finally hit upon a solution: a competition! Here was a format to bring tangible advantages to young performers of Chopin in the form of monetary prizes and an international performing career."

Gathering funds for the competition proved to be a difficult task. As Żurawlew remembered in later years: "I met with utter incomprehension, indifference and even aversion. The opinion among musicians was unanimous: Chopin is so great that he can defend himself. At the Ministry, it was announced that there were no funds for it [...] and that the whole idea was unfeasible". In this difficult situation, help arrived from Henryk Rewkiewicz — a businessman, music lover and board member of The Warsaw Music Society, who offered his personal financial guarantees to cover the entire deficit expected to arise from the first Competition.

Many years later Jerzy Żurawlew wrote, “[…] I was greatly helped by my friend Henryk Rewkiewicz, director of the Match Monopoly, who offered 15,000 złoty - a substantial sum at the time - for the Competition”. Ultimately, things picked up with the election of a new Polish president Ignacy Mościcki, who became the patron of the Chopin Competition.

Subsequent editions were organized in 1932 and 1937; the post-war fourth and fifth editions were held in 1949 and 1955. In 1957 the competition became one of the founding members of the World Federation of International Music Competitions in Geneva.

The pre-war editions of the competition as well as three editions after World War II (1955, 1960, 1965) were held in winter, close to the date of Chopin's birth – 22 January. However, due to repeated cases of jurors and competitors falling sick in this period, the organizers decided that the competition be held in October, the month in which Chopin died.

The 1980 edition of the Chopin Piano Competition was marked by controversy over the elimination of Ivo Pogorelić, who was seen as one of the favourites, in the third round of the competition. This prompted juror Martha Argerich to resign from the jury in protest, calling Pogorelić a "genius". Her action was supported by two other jurors, who declared that it was "unthinkable that such an artist should not make it to the finals". Other judges spoke out about their disapproval of what they considered Pogorelić's eccentricities.

Traditionally, during the competition on 17 October – the day of Chopin's death – a solemn mass is celebrated in the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw, during which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem is performed in accordance with the wishes of the composer.

In 2018, the Chopin Institute organized the inaugural I International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments.

The XVIII International Chopin Piano Competition, originally scheduled for 2020, was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and took place in 2021 instead.

Jury

For a more comprehensive list, see List of jurors of the International Chopin Piano Competition.

The jury has been chaired by:

• Witold Maliszewski (1927)
• Adam Wieniawski (1932 and 1937)
• Zbigniew Drzewiecki (1949, 1955, 1960, 1965)
• Kazimierz Sikorski (1970 and 1975)
• Kazimierz Kord (1980)
• Jan Ekier (1985, 1990, 1995)
• Andrzej Jasiński (2000, 2005, 2010)
• Katarzyna Popowa-Zydroń (2015, 2021)
• Garrick Ohlsson (2025)

Prize winners

See also: Category:Prize-winners of the International Chopin Piano Competition

The laureates of the Chopin International Piano Competition:

Top 3 prize-winners at each Edition

Edition	1st	2nd	3rd
I (1927)	Lev Oborin Soviet Union	Stanisław Szpinalski Poland	Róża Etkin Poland
II (1932)	Alexander Uninsky (c) Soviet Union	Imre Ungár (c) Hungary	Bolesław Kon Poland
III (1937)	Yakov Zak Soviet Union	Rosa Tamarkina Soviet Union	Witold Małcużyński Poland
IV (1949)	Bella Davidovich Soviet Union	Barbara Hesse-Bukowska Poland	Waldemar Maciszewski Poland
	Halina Czerny-Stefańska Poland (tie)
V (1955)	Adam Harasiewicz Poland	Vladimir Ashkenazy Soviet Union	Fou Ts'ong China
VI (1960)	Maurizio Pollini Italy	Irina Zaritskaya Soviet Union	Tania Achot-Haroutounian Iran
VII (1965)	Martha Argerich Argentina	Arthur Moreira Lima Brazil	Marta Sosińska Poland
VIII (1970)	Garrick Ohlsson United States	Mitsuko Uchida Japan	Piotr Paleczny Poland
IX (1975)	Krystian Zimerman Poland	Dina Joffe Soviet Union	Tatyana Fedkina Soviet Union
X (1980)	Dang Thai Son Vietnam	Tatyana Shebanova Soviet Union	Arutyun Papazyan Soviet Union
XI (1985)	Stanislav Bunin Soviet Union	Marc Laforet France	Krzysztof Jabłoński Poland
XII (1990)	Not awarded	Kevin Kenner United States	Yukio Yokoyama Japan
XIII (1995)	Not awarded	Philippe Giusiano France	Gabriela Montero Venezuela
		Alexei Sultanov Uzbekistan (tie)
XIV (2000)	Yundi Li China	Ingrid Fliter Argentina	Alexander Kobrin Russia
XV (2005)	Rafał Blechacz Poland	Not awarded	Dong-Hyek Lim South Korea
			Dong-Min Lim South Korea (tie)
XVI (2010)	Yulianna Avdeeva Russia	Lukas Geniušas Russia Lithuania	Daniil Trifonov Russia
		Ingolf Wunder Austria (tie)
XVII (2015)	Seong-Jin Cho South Korea	Charles Richard-Hamelin Canada	Kate Liu United States
XVIII (2021)	Bruce Liu Canada	Kyohei Sorita Japan	Martín García García Spain
		Alexander Gadjiev Italy Slovenia (tie)
XIX (2025)	to be determined

Traditional special awards at the competition include the Polish Radio prize for the best mazurka performance (since 1927), the Fryderyk Chopin Society in Warsaw prize for the best polonaise (since 1960), and the National Philharmonic prize for the best performance of a piano concerto (since 1980).

Medal table

Chopin Competition Medal Table

Rank	Nation	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	Soviet Union	5	6	2	13
2	Poland	4	2	7	13
3	Russia	1	1	2	4
	United States	1	1	2	4
5	Argentina	1	1	0	2
	Canada	1	1	0	2
	Italy	1	1	0	2
8	South Korea	1	0	2	3
9	China	1	0	1	2
10	Vietnam	1	0	0	1
11	Japan	0	2	1	3
12	France	0	2	0	2
13	Austria	0	1	0	1
	Brazil	0	1	0	1
	Hungary	0	1	0	1
	Lithuania	0	1	0	1
	Slovenia	0	1	0	1
	Uzbekistan	0	1	0	1
19	Iran	0	0	1	1
	Spain	0	0	1	1
Totals (20 entries)		17	23	19	59

Note: Medals were only awarded after 1975. In this table, winner of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Prize prior to 1975 are included as having won Gold, Silver, and Bronze respectively.

In popular culture

The Chopin Competition is a major plot device in the Japanese manga series Forest of Piano, serialized from 1998 to 2015 and adapted as an anime from 2018 to 2019. It follows the story of pianist Kai Ichinose, who ultimately wins the Chopin Competition. Creator Makoto Isshiki was inspired to write the series when she watched a documentary showing Stanislav Bunin winning the XI International Chopin Piano Competition. In 2023, a documentary film Pianoforte directed by Jakub Piątek shows the realities of the Chopin Piano Competition through exclusive behind-the-scenes footage and is set to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

See also

• List of classical music competitions

Further reading

• Ekiert, Janusz (2010). The Endless Search for Chopin: The History of the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw (1st ed.). Warsaw: Muza. ISBN 978-83-7495-812-7. OCLC 670048637.
• Arendt, Ada; Bogucki, Marcin; Majewski, Paweł; Sobczak, Kornelia (2020). Chopinowskie igrzysko. Historia Międzynarodowego Konkursu Pianistycznego im. Fryderyka Chopina 1927–2015 [The Chopin Games. The History of the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition 1927–2015] (in Polish) (1st ed.). Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. ISBN 978-83-235-4127-1. OCLC 1153285192.
• Ossowski, Jerzy; Brodska, Halina (2010). The International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in photographs. Warsaw: Fryderyk Chopin Institute. ISBN 978-83-61142-36-2. OCLC 802743657.

External links

• Official website
• History of the Competition in the Polish Culture Portal
• Official International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition for Amateurs website Archived 7 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine
• Piano Competitions & Music Competitions at Bakitone International Archived 3 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine
• Google Arts & Culture Archived 10 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine