I International Chopin Piano Competition

Piano competition (1927)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Polish. (July 2021) Click [show] for important translation instructions.

View a machine-translated version of the Polish article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,472 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Polish Wikipedia article at [[:pl:I Międzynarodowy Konkurs Pianistyczny im. Fryderyka Chopina]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|pl|I Międzynarodowy Konkurs Pianistyczny im. Fryderyka Chopina}} to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Award

The First International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition

Date

23–30 January 1927 (1927-01-23 – 1927-01-30)

Venue

National Philharmonic, Warsaw

Hosted by

Warsaw Music Society [pl]

Winner

Lev Oborin

Chopin Competition

· 2nd →

The I International Chopin Piano Competition (Polish: I Międzynarodowy Konkurs Pianistyczny im. Fryderyka Chopina) was the inaugural edition of the International Chopin Piano Competition, held from 23 to 30 March 1927 in Warsaw. Soviet pianist Lev Oborin was awarded the first prize.

History

The competition was initiated by Jerzy Żurawlew, who began seeking funds for a piano competition in 1925, influenced by Aleksander Michałowski. Żurawlew recalled later: "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.^[1] 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”.^[2] Ultimately, things picked up with the election of a new Polish president, Ignacy Mościcki, who became the patron of the Chopin Competition.^[3]

The competition was originally scheduled to start on 15 October 1926, the day of the unveiling of Wacław Szymanowski's Chopin Monument in the Łazienki Park, though it was delayed until 1927.^[3]

Awards

26 pianists took part in the competition, including 16 competitors from Poland. After an elimination round, 8 pianists were admitted to the final, where they performed two consecutive movements of one of Chopin's two piano concertos with the Warsaw Philharmonic.^[3]

As Żurawlew was convinced that only Polish musicians could truly understand Chopin's music, the jury was composed almost entirely of Poles, Alfred Hoehn of Germany, who judged the finals only, being the sole exception. Throughout the competition, the Polish press only presented Polish competitors as the real contenders for the prize, leading the public to expect a Polish victory. When Lev Oborin was awarded the first prize, it came as a shock and as a national humiliation, the Polish–Soviet War having ended just six years before.^[4]

A young Dmitri Shostakovich was among the participants, though he only received an honorable mention.^[3]

The following prizes were awarded:^[3]

Prize		Winner
1st	5,000zł	Lev Oborin	Soviet Union
2nd	3,000zł	Stanisław Szpinalski	Poland
3rd	2,000zł	Róża Etkin	Poland
4th	1,000zł	Grigory Ginzburg	Soviet Union
HM		Yuri Briuszkow	Soviet Union
		Jakub Gimpel	Poland
		Gui Mombaerts [fr]	Belgium
		Leopold Münzer	Poland
		Théo van der Pas	Netherlands
		Edward Prażmowski	Poland
		Dmitri Shostakovich	Soviet Union
		Bolesław Woytowicz	Poland

One special prize was awarded:

Special prize	Winner
Best Performance of Mazurkas	Henryk Sztompka [pl]	Poland

Jury

The jury consisted of:^[3]

Zygmunt Butkiewicz [pl]
Zbigniew Drzewiecki
Alfred Hoehn (finals only)
Witold Maliszewski (chairman)
Piotr Maszyński
Henryk Melcer-Szczawiński
Aleksander Michałowski (first round only)
Zofia Rabcewiczowa [pl]
Adam Sołtys [pl]
Felicjan Szopski [pl]
Józef Śmidowicz [pl]
Józef Turczyński
Adam Wyleżyński
Jerzy Żurawlew

References

^ "Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, Henryk Rewkiewicz". chopin.nifc.pl. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
^ Żurawlew, Jerzy. "Cel osiągnięty". Stolica. 1970, nr. 42 translated by Elżbieta Sozańska.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f "I International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition". Fryderyk Chopin Institute. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
^ McCormick, Lisa (2018). "Pogorelich at the Chopin: Towards a sociology of competition scandals". The Chopin Review (1). Fryderyk Chopin Institute. ISSN 2544-9249.