When the 19th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition starts on October 2, the jury will be welcoming back – for the third time – the pianist, scholar, editor-in-chief of The Complete Chopin: A New Critical Edition and Cambridge University professor, John Rink. The author of a handful of studies of Chopin, Rink’s passion for the music of Poland’s most famous musical son dates back over 40 years. ‘I began playing the piano at the age of 4 or 5, and eventually – as a teenager – got to the stage when I was ready for Chopin. I think my first big piece was the Second Scherzo, and it became something of a warhorse for me. I played it a lot through university. And when I went on to the Guildhall School to do postgraduate work, Chopin had become a kind of bread-and-butter composer, somebody I really related to. If I had any sort of Damascene conversion, it probably was at the start of my PhD, which I had intended to be on Brahms. But then it occurred to me, the composer I really, really care about was Chopin. And from that point on, 1985, it’s been non-stop.’
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Why Chopin Stands Apart
Chopin is unusual among the great composers for a number of reasons: one is that a very large proportion of his output forms part of the core classical repertoire. ‘Yes. There are very few pieces after about 1829-30 that we don’t hear – the Boléro, the Tarantella, the Variations, Op. 12 are not very often performed – but yes, the essence is definitely there. So that is extraordinary. The other thing, and there are many things that are remarkable about Chopin, is the fact that he essentially composed for only one instrument, the piano. And he is so strongly associated with that one instrument. The thing that I find particularly intriguing about Chopin – and I probably will never understand – is this paradox that we have a composer whose voice was so original that everybody recognised it and said, “Look at a few bars on the page and you know it’s Chopin”. So there’s this highly distinctive, original voice yet it also has the capacity to speak to basically anyone. So it’s both a highly individual language and a universal sort of musical language – if indeed we’re talking about language at all. I mean, the expressivity is remarkable, and I think it comes in large part from what we might describe as, in today’s parlance, a kind of musical vision, a kind of calling, if you will.’
Mieczyslaw Horszowski plays Chopin’s Boléro
From Argerich to Bruce Liu: The Competition’s Enduring Prestige
The Chopin Competition was launched in 1927 and, from 1955 on, has taken place every five years (the pandemic knocked the 18th edition back by a year, but this year it’s back on course), and the list of winners embraces some of the legendary pianists of our time: names like Maurizio Pollini (1960), Martha Argerich (‘65), Garrick Ohlsson (’70 – and Jury Chairman for 2025), Krystian Zimerman (’75), Rafał Blechacz (’05), Yulianna Adveeva (’10), Seong-Jin Cho (’15) and Bruce Liu (’21) from the first-prize winners. And among the second and third placed, there are pianists like Mitsuko Uchida, Ingrid Fliter, Lukas Geniušas, Ingolf Wunder, Charles Richard-Hamelin, Daniil Trifonov, Kate Liu, Alexander Gadjiev and Martín García García. ‘I found it extremely interesting in the last edition, 2021, just how distinctive the most successful pianists really were. I mean, sometimes juries are accused of looking for one identikit type of performer, but that list of successful candidates would absolutely challenge that. You had very idiosyncratic people like Martín García García, for example, or Aimi Kobayashi [who was placed joint fourth] or Alexander Gadjiev. These are marvellous, individual artistic voices. And I think that’s another explanation of why so many of these players have gone on to excel and to become, and remain, household names.’
Martha Argerich in Warsaw at the 1965 International Frédéric Chopin Competition
The Art of Rubato
Talk to any pianophile, and particularly one steeped in Chopin interpretation, and very soon you’ll hear the word ‘rubato’, that expressive technique by which the music is gently speeded up and slowed down at the whim of the performer. Yet, more subtle still, there’s another rubato whereby the pulse – usually the left hand – stays in rhythm while the right hand bends slightly within that overall pulse. ‘I think it’s absolutely right to talk about multiple types of rubatos,’ Rink agrees. ‘And Chopin himself was somewhat outspoken about these things, even though he tended to be discreet about his musical views. He was quite clear on this very point and referred to a kind of general flexibility of tempo.
But we also find what is often called the bel-canto rubato, so a more or less steady accompaniment with the free melody. You also have what is called a sort of national rubato, a Polish rubato, where you tend to have a regularity at the bar level, but flexibility therein. Hence the second beat and third beat deformations, if you will, that are characteristic of the mazurka. The bel-canto one is absolutely vital to understand when you’re playing Chopin’s nocturnes, for example, or anything that’s particularly lyrical. There’s a freedom that the melody has that is not constrained by the accompaniment. I often, for my students, play Maria Callas singing Norma’s “Casta Diva” in that famous Paris performance, and she sings with this incredible freedom. She’s way out of sync with the orchestra at times, but it always works. And that’s the kind of secret to playing Chopin. Now, interestingly, Pauline Viardot, who herself was a singer and one of Chopin’s students, said that many people misunderstood Chopin’s rubato and just play out of time. She said it’s better not even to try it than to wallow in that sort of thing.’
Evgeny Kissin plays Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 27 No. 2, a perfect example of Chopin’s Rubato.
Inside the Jury Room
Different music competitions have different ways of reaching their conclusions: at some, the jury – rather like at a judicial trial – sits down and argues the merits (or otherwise) of the contestants in a special ‘open’ deliberation; at others, and the Chopin competition is one of these, the jurors hand in their votes after a number of recitals. Yet for transparency the Chopin competition publishes each juror’s votes. ‘We’re encouraged not to talk with each other – the organisers very much want independent opinions, and I think that’s a good thing’ Rink believes. ‘The practice of handing in scoresheets after the morning or afternoon blocks – so even more rigorous, if you will, than at the end of the day – works against conferring and being influenced in an adverse way. It’s slightly frustrating because I very much want to know what other people are thinking. After all, the great pleasure of sharing views and so forth is somewhat denied by this kind of thing, but in the interests of fairness it’s a sacrifice worth making.’
For the jury, it’s an awful lot of Chopin to listen to – is there a danger of too much? ‘No, it’s an amazing privilege,’ Rink counters, ‘but it is also very, very exhausting! In Round 1, we will have 17 recitals a day for five days in a row – so that’s 85 contestants in Round 1. You start at 10 in the morning and you finish at close to 10 at night. So yes, it’s not for the faint hearted, but it’s well worth it. I always find something new to listen to. And of course that is helped when the pianists themselves bring something new to it.’
And a last question to someone whose devotion to Chopin is as both pianist and scholar: how does he listen? ‘Starting as a pianist myself, very young, and then working on the music from two perspectives, both as a performer and in my musicological way, looking at sources and analysis and history and reception and all of these things, it all comes together. So to answer that question I’d say, “I listen as a musician”, and we must remember that musicians certainly find it beneficial to look at sources and listen to recordings and study history and reception and so forth. Being a musician is not about moving your fingers, it’s about it’s a way of life. It’s how you live. So I listen as a musician and to be able to listen to performances generally of a very high quality, often with real individuality, of a composer I happen to love and know pretty well, is one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done in my musical life.’
Watch the 19th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition Finals and First Prize Winners’ Concert here.
