Participants have been chosen by an international selection panel from amongst 84 candidates who had submitted their applications.
Japan has the biggest number of pianists in the competition (ten), followed by Poland (six) and Italy (four).
China, South Korea, the United States, and Russia are represented by two pianists each. The remaining participants come from Australia, Austria, France, Spain, Canada, Germany and Hungary.
Poland’s National Chopin Institute, which is the organiser of The International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments, stated on its website: “The pianists representing the Russian Federation who have been qualified for the Competition, accepting the apolitical character of the Competition, submitted a written statement in which they unambiguously condemned Russia’s aggression against Ukraine as well as all actions of the Russian Federation in violation of international law.”
The participants in the competition will have at their disposal period instruments from the collection of the National Chopin Institute (Erard from 1838, 1849 and 1855, Pleyel from 1848 and 1854, Broadwood from 1843), copies of historical pianos as well as instruments from other European collections.
Their performances will be judged by an international jury consisting of prominent Polish and foreign pianists, including Paolo Giacometti, Yves Henry, Tobias Koch, Vaclav Luks, Janusz Olejniczak, Olga Paschenko, Ewa Pobłocka, Andreas Staier and Wojciech Świtała.
The first International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments was held in 2018. It was won by Poland’s Tomasz Ritter.
A statue of the great Romantic composer Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849) in Warsaw's Łazienki Park. Photo: Bartosz MORĄG, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
(mk/pm)