The recital includes works by Chopin, Schubert and Debussy.
In addition to Piemontesi, who won the 2007 Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels, the festival will feature pianists including Kevin Chen, winner of the 2023 Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv and of last year’s Geneva Competition; and Federico Colli, winner of the 2012 Leeds Competition.
Other outstanding performers include Illia Ovcharenko, winner of the 2022 Calgary Competition; Yulianna Avdeeva, winner of the 2010 Chopin Competition in Warsaw; and Polish pianist Piotr Pawlak, winner of the 2022 Helsinki Competition.
Poland's Jakub Kuszlik, Fourth Prize winner at the 2021 Chopin Competition in Warsaw, is also expected to perform at the event.
Prominent Polish pianist Piotr Paleczny, who has been the festival’s artistic director since 1993, has told the media that one of the event’s highlights "with a special emotional flavor" will be a recital by cellist Camille Thomas, accompanied by pianist Julien Brocal.
Thomas plays a Stradivari instrument that once belonged to Chopin’s friend cellist Auguste Franchomme. It was on this instrument that Franchomme played for Chopin excerpts from his Sonata in G-minor shortly before the composer’s death in 1849.
The International Chopin Piano Festival in Duszniki is the oldest music festival in Poland. Launched in 1946, it is now in its 78th edition.
The festival commemorates Chopin’s stay in the spa in 1826. The iconic Romantic composer was 16 years old when he came to Duszniki, then Bad Reinerz, for treatment and gave an impromptu charity concert.
This was not an easy assignment for Chopin as there were no good pianos available. In a letter to his teacher Józef Elsner, he referred to this with some bitterness: “These are instruments that give me more pain than pleasure.”
The proceeds from the 1826 concert were donated to an orphaned family.
The 78th Duszniki International Chopin Piano Festival runs until August 12.
(mk/gs)