Period-specific instruments haven’t just breathed new life into the music of Bach and Mozart. They have also transformed the way we understand and play the music of Frédéric Chopin.

From the moment The Frédéric Chopin Institute acquired the composer’s last piano – a Pleyel instrument dating from 1848 – artists and enthusiasts have been given a new appreciation of Chopin’s genius.

The Institution’s collection of period pianos and replicas has grown and grown. For years, these instruments have been made available to the world’s finest pianists and period-instrument ensembles. Since 2018, they have found an additional lease of life as the bedrock of the only music competition of its kind: the International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments.

The first edition of the festival, held that year to mark the centenary of Polish Independence, attracted 60 pianists from 19 countries. The second edition comes to the Warsaw Philharmonic for ten days from October 5, but invites the world to watch: all three rounds will be live-streamed for free via YouTube.

Across the competition, contestants will have the opportunity to play on pianos by Érard (from 1838, 1849 and 1855), Pleyel (1848 and 1854) and Broadwood (1843) – all alongside replicas of period instruments and instruments loaned from European collections.

These straight-strung pianos, with their more piquant and nuanced sound, reveal countless treasures in Chopin’s music – throwing fresh light on his unmatched decorative writing, his striking harmonic invention and his focused understanding of the mechanisms of the instruments he played.

The Real Chopin

The same might be said of the Institute’s recording project titled The Real Chopin. This series of recordings on period pianos has changed they way we listen - a point acknowledged by Gramophone’s reviewers. The series has ‘enriched my appreciation of these still underrated pieces’ (Harriet Smith), and allowed Chopin’s concertos to sound ‘freshly minted, liberated from a century’s worth of empty display’ (Jed Distler).

This year’s competition will offer the chance to hear the Chopin piano concertos from a full ensemble of period instruments. Both concertos are the prescribed work for the competition finals (October 13-14). In Rounds 1 and 2 (October 6-11), contestants will play Chopin, Bach, Mozart and polonaises by Polish composers from the first half of the nineteenth century.

36 exceptional pianists from around the world have made it through pre-selection to be invited to Warsaw. Watching over them will be a nine-strong jury including distinguished Polish pianists and competition laureates Ewa Pobłocka and Wojciech Świtała.

Joining them on this year’s jury is Andreas Staier, who has done more than any other recording artist to enhance our understanding of period-specific pianos, their capabilities and the music they were designed to play.

It’s not just audiences and critics who get fresh perspectives on early Romantic music from the more delicate sound world of period pianos. So do performing musicians, for whom the experience of playing Chopin on instruments the composer would have known can transform their understanding of his music technically and aesthetically. You can follow our young pianists, aged between 18 and 35, every step of the way via the live stream.

We live in times of rapidly shifting ideas. So did Chopin, whose Europe was expanding its creative horizons at extraordinary speed. Join us for a celebration not just of Chopin and his contemporaries, but for vital new insights into their music as old pianos meet a new generation of pianists.

Follow the International Chopin Competition on their YouTube channel: youtube.com/@chopininstitute