On the 21st, Eric Lu (27), a pianist of American nationality, was announced as the winner of the 19th International Chopin Piano Competition at the Warsaw Philharmonic Hall in Poland.
Eric Lu, who was born in the United States, graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music and had previously won the 2018 Leeds Piano Competition. He had placed fourth in the Chopin Competition, where Seong-Jin Cho won in 2015, and achieved first place after competing again a decade later.
Kevin Chen (20) from Canada secured second place, while Chinese pianist Wang Zitong (26) came in third. The final round, held from the 18th for three days at the Warsaw Philharmonic Hall, featured 11 participants who had advanced through three rounds of preliminaries. They performed Chopin’s Polonaise Fantaisie and one of Chopin’s Piano Concertos No. 1 or No. 2 with an orchestra.
In this competition, brothers Lee Hyuk and Lee Hyo from Korea reached the third round of the preliminaries but did not advance to the final. Lee Hyuk was the sole Korean finalist in the 2021 competition.
The Chopin Competition, which began in 1927, is a prestigious event held every five years by the National Fryderyk Chopin Institute of Poland to honor the Polish pianist Fryderyk Chopin (1810–1849). Previous winners include Maurizio Pollini (1960), Martha Argerich (1965), and Krystian Zimerman (1975). Korean Seong-Jin Cho won in 2015, and in 2005, the Lim Dong-min and Lim Dong-hyek brothers achieved a shared third place without a second place winner.
This year’s competition attracted a record 642 applicants, with 85 participants qualified to perform in the finals, including 66 who passed preliminary rounds and 19 winners of major piano competitions. Among the finalists, more than half were of Asian nationality, including three from China, two from Japan, and one from Malaysia. The winner, Lu, is a Chinese-American.
For the first time since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, two Russian performers participated without displaying their nationality, and the organizers required them to sign a statement condemning Russia’s violations of international law.
(Photos courtesy of AP, Chopin Competition, Yonhap News)