Young pianists vie for global glory in Poland’s Chopin contest

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Warsaw, Poland -- Rehearsal time is over. The world’s best and most ambitious young pianists have descended on Warsaw for the Frederic Chopin International Piano Competition -- for some, a gateway to classical music glory.

Fans from around the globe snapped up tickets as much as a year ago. The lucky ones will hear an opening night concert on Thursday and follow along as the contest builds to a thrilling climax on October 20.

Winning the Chopin International -- held every five years in the 19th-century composer’s homeland -- can raise the curtain to playing at venues across the globe and signing contracts with the most renowned record labels.

Previous winners of the competition, which began in 1927, include some of the greatest names in classical music, including Maurizio Pollini, Martha Argerich and Krystian Zimerman.

American pianist Garrick Ohlsson, who clinched the top prize in 1970, will chair the jury tasked with selecting this year’s winner from the 84 contestants.

Who will participate?

Young pianists aged from 16 to 30 are eligible to take part, and the Warsaw organizers received a record number of more than 600 applications for this year’s edition.

Only around a tenth of them made it through a complex and multi-stage qualification process that included playing in a preliminary round in Warsaw.

Together with laureates of other piano contests, who were granted direct access to the first round, a total of 84 pianists from 20 countries will start to compete on Friday.

Chinese pianists will be the most numerous with 28 contestants, followed by Poland and Japan with 13 each.

Are tickets available?

Tickets for the competition sold out within 30 minutes of their release online in October last year.

“The finals sold out in two minutes,” the Chopin Institute spokesman Aleksander Laskowski told AFP.

He added that classical music buffs queued for several hours for the batch of tickets only available at the box office.

For those desperate to get inside Warsaw’s National Philharmonic hall, where the competition is held, a handful of tickets could be available before every audition if ticket holders do not show up.

Every stage -- including the finals held on October 18-20, after which the winner will be announced -- will be livestreamed on the Chopin Institute’s social media channels.

Russian pianists

This year’s edition is the first since Russia launched its full-scale war in Ukraine, and host Poland staunchly supports Kyiv in its efforts to fend off the invasion.

The organisers said last year that Russian pianists would only be admitted under a neutral flag, “just as athletes did at the Paris Olympics,” Laskowski told AFP.

They also had to sign a statement in which they categorically condemned the violation of international law.

Two Russian pianists playing under a neutral flag, Philipp Lynov and Andrey Zenin, are among the contestants.

What is the prize?

The winner will receive a prize of 60,000 euros (US$70,500).

But winning or even reaching the last stage of the competition is seen as a career jump-start for the young pianists.

“After the Chopin Competition concludes, a months-long concert tour will begin,” the organizers said on their website, adding the tour comprises “prestigious concert halls across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.”

The last event, held in 2021 after being deferred because of the COVID pandemic, ended with Canadian pianist Bruce Xiaoyu Liu scoring the highest accolade.

AFP