The 19th International Chopin Piano Competition, Warsaw 1-23 October 2025 - Results of the Preliminaries - Reviewer's Notebook for XVI, XVII, XVIII International Fryderyk Chopin Competitions from October 2010 - October 2021 - A few personal thoughts
'There are the notes, there is what is behind the notes and there is what is between the notes'
Ignaz Friedman
The music of Chopin enters chambers of the heart and soul no other composer touches
In the horrifying conflagration that approaches, faith, spiritual nourishment and emotional consolation is of utmost importance
The music of Chopin has become once again profoundly meaningful for humanity
Michael Moran
The Selection Committee, headed by Professor Wojciech Świtała, has selected 171 artists from 28 countries from a record number of 642 applications, who will meet in Warsaw for the Preliminaries from 23 April to 4 May 2025.
Their names were published on 4 March 2025 on the official website of the 19th Chopin Competition:
https://konkursy.nifc.pl/en/miedzynarodowy/o-konkursie/77/
The most numerous groups are representatives of: China (more than 60 qualified participants), South Korea, Japan, Poland, Canada and Italy. During the Preliminaries, we will also hear representatives from countries as distant as Brazil, Thailand, Malaysia, Uzbekistan.
The application stage for the Chopin Competition Qualifiers ran from 1 October 2024 to 12 January 2025.
642 applications were received from almost all over the world - from 54 countries.
The Preliminaries for the 19th Chopin Competition will be held in the Chamber Hall of the Warsaw Philharmonic. The Jury of the Preliminaries, consisting of: Wojciech Świtała (chairman), Ludmil Angelov, Nikolai Demidenko, Krzysztof Jabłoński, Kevin Kenner, Marc Laforêt, Alberto Nosè, Piotr Paleczny, Ewa Pobłocka and Katarzyna Popowa-Zydroń, will select around 80 pianists to perform at the Chopin Competition in October.
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The 19th Chopin Competition will officially begin on 2nd October 2025 with the opening concert. Auditions in October will last three weeks. On 20 October, a new winner will be announced, who, like each of his predecessors, will have the chance to make piano history. A day later, there will be an awards gala and the first of three concerts by the winners.The winner will receive €60,000 and a gold medal, the entire prize pool amounts to more than €240,000. In addition, the winners of the musical tournament will be invited to a world tour lasting several months. Details of the concerts will be published after the Preliminaries.
The 19th edition brought another record in terms of the number of applications. A total of 642 pianists from 54 countries entered the qualifying stage. The most numerous countries represented at the Preliminaries are China (over 60 qualifiers), South Korea, Japan, Poland, Canada and Italy, but we will also hear representatives from countries as far afield as Brazil, Thailand, Malaysia and Uzbekistan.
The Official Chopin Competition Website:
The Official Chopin Competition Website:
Some personal thoughts before the Chopin Competition
and
The nature of criticism after long experience
I am not in the business of brief and comfortable comment. Some Facebook and Twitter comments, although an expression of the genuine enthusiasm of the moment, are rather fatuous and contribute little to our understanding of Chopin or the interpretation of his music. Especially when you consider the years of work, analysis, stress and sacrifice that has gone into each and every performance, each and every piece, bar by bar by bar. The competitors deserve more than three words.
I stand in awe of all the competitors having studied music seriously and tried myself to excel as a pianist and harpsichordist. Not at this level of accomplishment!
'A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer [read 'musician'], and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation'
It seems to me that the Chopin intimate
Of course these young tyros have unimaginable musical talents (more than I could ever dream of or hope to achieve). However, I feel the execution often bears scarcely any resemblance at all to the way Chopin conceived of his own music and how it should be performed - at least from written descriptions by the composer, his pupils and contemporary listeners. Liszt can tolerate a high degree of dynamic inflation and exaggerated tempi on the mighty Steinway (after all he invented the solo recital that we witness now and was famous for breaking the pianos of the day). But for me Chopin cannot tolerate too much of this without sacrificing at least some of his uniquely poetic and intimate musical essence. Too many performances had little dynamic variation, variety of articulation, often a harsh tone, artificially contrived tempo rubato rather than a natural organic flowering of sensibility.
Chopin should be seen through the fine filter of Bach, Mozart and Hummel not in hindsight through the declamatory sound world of Liszt, Rachmaninov, Scriabin and Prokofiev. But we are living in 2025 and time has separated us permanently and possibly forever from the historical source of this music and the rather precieux society connected with a proportion of it.
That is how modern matters are today. Accept it Mr. Moran! Accept! Well I find it difficult to accept and perhaps musical ostracism will follow.
That is how modern matters are today. Accept it Mr. Moran! Accept! Well I find it difficult to accept and perhaps musical ostracism will follow.
Does historicism really matter?
I suppose no composer divides opinion so passionately as Chopin. Everyone has their ‘own Chopin’ which may well be irreconcilable, including members of the jury. So many (of course not all) the modern interpretations we have heard over the years (however astonishing, even astounding, in terms of finger dexterity) with a few obvious exceptions lack creative poetry, aristocratic sensibility, elegance, intimacy, true refinement of touch, tone, and individuality. Often a desire for simple bon goût....
All these admirable qualities must be brought to bear on Chopin. The composer balanced his masculine and feminine natures in a unique manner. At least he has been fully liberated from the stigma of effeminate 'salon composer' which persisted for so long. He was a subversive political force certainly but we seem to have moved too far in the opposite direction - at least as far as I am concerned. Chopin is no muscle-bound revolutionary manning the street barricades throwing rocks he recently collected down in the quarry. One does get that impression on occasion.
‘My Chopin’ is not as hugely dynamic, physical and even violent as the concert audience and professors seem to demand today. But this is the violent world we live in that adores physical prowess in sport, obsessively cultivates image over substance, is addicted to tumultuous special effects in the cinema, fights wars on computer games or for real in the horrifying bloodbath that is now the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan.
This Zeitgeist is reflected in the arts and even subconsciously in the approach to interpreting this most inaccessible and introverted of composers known in his time as 'the Ariel of pianists'. He was not an exhibitionist and not fond of display. I look to musical art for the consolations of a more civilized world of beauty or passionate resistance, seduced by sound not browbeaten with more of the same violence with which I am now all too familiar.
Audiences in general are now after the sensational - perhaps this has always been the case. Giving it to them with the technological competition in the entertainment industry and internet has become more and more difficult for piano playing. To shine as a performer seems to involve for many a gross distortion of the music. Chopin for some merely offers them a celebrity platform for display rather than authentic interest in Chopin's true intentions. 'Chopin's true intentions' - what a joke that sounds today. Well, I never had a commercial mind.
Of course you cannot build a modern international concert career on the 19th century Pleyel that Chopin so adored. I am not advocating a return to the past. But if you are sufficiently open-minded you can certainly learn a great deal about Chopin's original musical intentions and modify your approach to the modern instrument if you experiment with the early instrument. Additionally, did you know Chopin's piano had subtly unequal temperament? As a harpsichordist, naturally I was interested in this subject and I began to explore this scarcely mentioned fact. Unequal temperament gives the various keys a different colour and character. The keys become associated with different moods or affects. This was well known to the French clavecinistes. Chopin belonged to a society of 'ancient music' and knew the music of Telemann and Handel. Did he ever hear the music of Francois Couperin?
Forgive this digression. Equal temperament was not considered possible to achieve or even desirable until around the turn of the nineteenth century. Chopin was in despair when his tuner Ennike for some reason drowned himself and he could not find another to tune his piano to the temperament he desired. Chopin had an acute ear unsuited in its intimacy and sensitivity to the Lisztian onslaught of solo public performance that burgeoned after he died. This is the tradition which has persisted and which we have inherited. Much of the Chopin aesthetic effectively died with the composer. I agree it cannot be resurrected in its entirety but there should be some evidence in performance of having at least explored the historical context in which Chopin composed.
(For more on this fascinating subject see Chopin in Performance: History, Theory, Practice NIFC Warszawa 2004 p.25-38 'Towards a Well-tempered Chopin' by Johnathan Bellman).
Chopin's directives and descriptions in letters and reported conversations are generally ignored in 2025 through pragmatic necessity. There has arisen slowly but inexorably, a standardized ‘Chopin product’, even a 'Chopin brand'. This results from the claims of a financially viable career both as student and professor today, the expectations of the current classical music market, rapacious musical agents and the expectations of a prospective paying audience hungry for sensational playing.
Do we not have an ethical responsibility to attempt to come as close to Chopin's intentions as possible?
Chopin was a renowned teacher in Paris who actually began to write what became a stillborn piano method.
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Chopin's Polonaise - a Ball in Hôtel Lambert in Paris (1859) Teofil Kwiatkowski (1809-1891) |
'I only indicate. It is up to the listener to complete the picture.'
he commented to his pupil, music lover and pianist-amateur of a German origin, Wilhelm von Lenz. Understatement and sensitive restraint is hardly what we are hearing in many cases today.
Imitation not inspiration seems to rule too many young pianists from whatever country.
Where is the magic dust?
As Arthur Rubinstein used to comment to his young pupils - 'A brilliant performance but where is the music?'
Where is the magic dust?
As Arthur Rubinstein used to comment to his young pupils - 'A brilliant performance but where is the music?'
Well, we are now in a 'global village' as recognized in a prescient phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan in The Gutenberg Galaxy when I was a young man. The dangers of the emergence of an ubiquitous 'standard' Chopin style has been exacerbated by our miraculous technology and perfectionist recordings. Inadequate opinions of two or three words with no analytical depth flood the social media. A competition win or high placing on one's CV seems to have become a mandatory requirement for a successful pianistic career.
As to individuality of appearance at the keyboard, certainly yes that is an obvious factor, but at least we hope to be spared the distractions of overt sexual display as an 'Add on' in this competition. The cultivation of an individual voice, individual tone and touch, something unique to say, spontaneity, rethinking or communicating that inspired feeling of recreation of music in the moment – such are of the greatest significance. Even a repertoire of familiar Chopineque expressive gestures seems to have been 'learned' by many past contestants of this competition. I feel this comes partly from exposure to the repetitive nature of performances and the possibility of listening to 'flawless' recordings an infinite number of times.
Have I become aesthetically deficient? Over-familiar with Chopin's music? Possibly.
Yes, hopefully there will be a few precious exceptions in the competition who will move my soul rather than astonish my ears. One does not hear the finest in art during piano competitions - well, rarely.
Have I become aesthetically deficient? Over-familiar with Chopin's music? Possibly.
Yes, hopefully there will be a few precious exceptions in the competition who will move my soul rather than astonish my ears. One does not hear the finest in art during piano competitions - well, rarely.
I receive the odd impression that many pianists can be inhibited, playing to please the jury. In past competitions they seemed fearful of straying too far from an imagined or even taught norm of acceptability or 'correctness' in contemporary Chopin interpretation. As a result, many contestants sounded terribly similar. Such a lack of spontaneity! A disturbing standardization seemed to prevail rather than offering interpretations from their own inner musical convictions, intuition and knowledge of the composer which would lead to a living recreation of the music of Chopin.
Piano competitions should not have the constraining nature of an academic examination.
Piano competitions should not have the constraining nature of an academic examination.
One never becomes a true artist by 'playing safe'!
My great-uncle, the glamorous concert pianist Edward Cahill (I spent over 5 years writing his biography) always impressed on me that the key to being an artist as a musician was personality and character.
'One must have a rich internal and external creative, emotional and artistic life, Michael, to express the finest in music.' he often said.
I could not help thinking of the first volume of Arthur Rubinstein's autobiography My Early Years. What a cosmopolitan life trawling the streets of Paris in the small hours to 'questionable red-light destinations' with the great Russian bass Feodor Chaliapine! Then the inventive mind and orchestral sonorities, sheer individuality of the great piano virtuoso Josef Hofmann who also came up with the splendid, indispensable idea of a motor car windscreen wiper!
My great-uncle, the glamorous concert pianist Edward Cahill (I spent over 5 years writing his biography) always impressed on me that the key to being an artist as a musician was personality and character.
'One must have a rich internal and external creative, emotional and artistic life, Michael, to express the finest in music.' he often said.
I could not help thinking of the first volume of Arthur Rubinstein's autobiography My Early Years. What a cosmopolitan life trawling the streets of Paris in the small hours to 'questionable red-light destinations' with the great Russian bass Feodor Chaliapine! Then the inventive mind and orchestral sonorities, sheer individuality of the great piano virtuoso Josef Hofmann who also came up with the splendid, indispensable idea of a motor car windscreen wiper!
Do some remember Evgeni Bozhanov, Yulianna Avdeeva and Daniil Trifonov in the 2010 competition? Yulianna won that competition and Daniil awarded Third Prize. And for the lucky few, their performances at Duszniki Zdroj ? Three supremely creative pianists who thought for themselves and evolved unique interpretations full of nuance and individuality. I hope the overall standard of the future competition will be both high musically and not simply 'technically', if you can actually make such a distinction with meaning.
Evgeni Bozhanov for example was an exception to everything I have said above and I felt him to be a poetic and truly creative musician of individual genius even if he did not always observe the letter of the score. After all, notation is only the beginning of that great traverse through the mind and heart of a composer. There is joy, even 'fun' in his music-making of the youthful Chopin.
I may easily have missed a similarly creative competitor this year (I have not watched and heard every individual in the selection for the preliminaries, I simply lack the stamina). I truly hope to be pleasantly surprised as the competition progresses with the melancholy attrition of competitors that is built into the competition concept.
Yet how I still yearn for the electricity that flowed through the audience in the Filharmonia whenever Bozhanov appeared in the past...his individual account of the Polonaise-Fantasie was desperately poignant with haunting pianissimos, glowing tone colours, great variation in dynamic and articulation. This was a late work completed when Chopin was seriously ill. Bozhanov remained almost arrogantly 'his own man' throughout that past competition and I deeply respect his individuality even if I disagreed with certain of his readings and his rather theatrical postures at the instrument. He was awarded Fourth Prize at the XVI Fryderyk Chopin International Piano Competition in October 2010.
The entire approach to training modern pianists in the interpretation of Chopin on the modern concert instrument of our day needs a revolutionary rethink. This has already begun with the inspired initiative by Stanisław Leszczyński, Artistic Director of the Polish National Chopin Institute, of the Chopin Competition on period instruments.
A window on a different garden has been opened which does not replace but augments contemporary knowledge in the fraught attempt to recreate the distant past sensibility. Young pianists of immense musical insight are emerging from this familiarization with the unique sound world of the Chopin period - Dimitry Ablogin, Tomasz Ritter, Eric Guo, Aurelia Visovan, Federico Colli, Naruhiko Kawaguchi, Alexandra Swigut, Krzysztof Ksiazek, Dang Thai Son, Kevin Kenner, Nelson Goerner and many others .... the tide is turning but is it in 'the big one' , the International Chopin Piano Competition we are about to witness in 2025?
If you feel so inclined, much more on this subject lies here:
I do wonder sometimes what my favourite Chopin exponents and teachers - the great artists Arthur Rubinstein, Dinu Lipatti, Ignaz Friedman, Vladimir de Pachmann, Josef Hofmann, Małcużyński, Michelangeli, Cortot, Solomon, Zimerman, Sokolov or Nadia Boulanger or even Leschetizky would make of the present climat de Chopin. Some greats pianists avoided playing Chopin altogether like Giseking, Gould and Brendel. Simply because you are a great pianist does not mean you can come to terms fully with or even like the music of this most ambiguous of composers. Passing time alters the sensibility.
Sic transit gloria mundi
Consulting Chopin
facsimiles and autographs is of the greatest historical significance for
pianists if they wish to approach as close as they can in 2025 to the living
spirit of the composer. So superior to a sterile Urtext presentation which
is yet a clearly indispensable text for serious music studies.
Facsimiles are not
more or less interesting museum artifacts displayed in glass cases along with
the ribbons, inkwells, lorgnettes and gold coffee cups but contain a wealth of
information and clues to the composer's personality and his process of
composition.
So much of interest is
edited out in modern printed editions including his tormented indecisiveness
even in small works such as this.
Note the tremendously
long slurs in the Prelude below indicating such a long cantabile or legato which
never appears in printed editions.
Why did Chopin write
them and with the permanence of ink rather than pencil?
They makes perfect
sense played on a Pleyel instrument with its inadequate
damping and varied and hazy colour palette. These discoveries can then be
transferred to the more 'evolved' instrument which Chopin may well have loved,
the concert Steinway
A journey of rewarding
even exciting discovery lies in store during this 2025 competition for the
interpretatively adventurous and perceptive pianist. Those who search for their
own true voice and what they consider to be that of the composer. Intuition and
knowledge working as one! Heart, intelligence and technique as
Horowitz observed.
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Chopin's autograph of Prelude No: VI in B Minor Op. 28. Biblioteka Narodowa, Warszawa Reviewer's unabridged Notebook for XVI, XVII, XVIII International Fryderyk Chopin Competitions from October 2010 - October 2021
The music of Chopin enters chambers of the heart and soul no other composer touches In the horrifying conflagration that approaches, faith, spiritual nourishment and emotional consolation is of utmost importance The music of Chopin has become once again profoundly meaningful for humanity (Michael Moran) The XVI International Fryderyk Chopin Competition Warsaw, October 2010 XVII International Fryderyk Chopin Competition Warsaw, October 2015 XVIII International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition Preliminary Round Warsaw, 12-23 July 2021 XVIII International Fryderyk Chopin Competition Warsaw, October 2021 |
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