By Esti DeAngelis, Managing Editor
Many call it the Olympics of the piano world, and, in some ways, it’s easy to understand why. The International Chopin Piano Competition, first held in 1927 and held every five years in Warsaw since the end of World War II, was created with the express purpose of invigorating the public with the same enthusiasm for classical music, particularly with regard to the work of the legendary Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, as it had for sporting events.
Although the average person today is still more likely to be a sports fan than a fan of the works of Chopin, Bach or Mozart, the Chopin Competition has succeeded in a big way: it has become one of the most prestigious, well-regarded classical music competitions in the world. And though the average person may not have heard of it, the competition is also far and away the most popular classical music competition in the world.
The 2025 edition was no exception. Tickets went on sale in October 2024, a year before the competition held this past October, and they still sold out in half an hour. A percentage of the tickets was reserved to be bought only in-person at the box office, and fans traveled from around the world to camp out in line.
The competition’s reputation is huge among those who love Chopin, whose work consists almost exclusively of solo piano pieces — and the Chopin Competition launched the careers of some of the most brilliant pianists of the last century: Maurizio Pollini, Martha Argerich, Krystian Zimerman… their names, and those of other celebrated prizewinners, may not mean much to those unfamiliar with classical music, but to those who are, the competition selecting them as winners reveals both its authority in the world of classical piano as well as its unmistakable knack for selecting the ultra-gifted among a competitor pool of already gifted pianists.
The title “the Olympics of the piano world” does seem to fit, then, doesn’t it? Well, sort of. Although the competition carries the same prestige in the classical music world as the Olympics does in the sports world, and while it has selected pianists whom audiences later agreed were worth the price of seeing perform live, there is one major difference between competitive sports and competitive piano playing: piano competitions are almost entirely subjective.
I’ve thus far painted a picture of the Chopin Competition that is devoid of controversy, one in which the pianists who go furthest are unanimously deemed the very best by all members of the jury and the audience alike. In truth, this is a dishonest portrayal, because when you’re good enough to compete in a competition like this one, the focus usually isn’t actually on wrong notes or memory lapses. The focus is instead on things far more individual, and thus controversial. Things that have to do with how the pianist chooses to interpret the work of a composer who has been dead for nearly 200 years: phrasing, voicing, color, rubato, articulation. These terms may be unfamiliar, but think of them like the things that make one person love a book and another hate it — not grammar or spelling, which are generally matters of right versus wrong — but things like tone, narrative style, pacing and even the story an author chooses to tell.
The 84 pianists who made it past the preliminary round and performed in the competition’s first stage this year are some of the best young artists in the world. But each plays Chopin differently, and each has developed their own style and their own way to interpret the scores. And each person on this year’s 17-member jury, made up of some of the world’s most celebrated pianists and piano teachers, many of whom are Chopin Competition laureates themselves, plays Chopin differently as well. Although sometimes a singularly unique artist will emerge and bring about almost complete consensus among all members of the jury, subjective judging means disagreement, both between members of the jury and between the jury and the audience itself.
As far as recent Chopin Competitions go, this year’s was especially controversial. Shocking eliminations made that much clear, but the numbers confirmed it. Unlike most classical music competitions, this one is commendably transparent and releases the scores of each individual jury member after the final prizes are awarded. According to statistics compiled after the competition, on 28 occasions, a pianist awarded a 24 or 25 (25 being the highest score) by one member of the jury was actually eliminated in that round, because they received scores from other jury members low enough to drag their average down significantly. In the 2021 competition, this only happened eight times. In 2015, only three. In other words, in recent Chopin Competition history, the jury has never been so divided, and pianists deemed the favorites of some jury members were much less remarkable to their colleagues.
This phenomenon, though heightened this year compared to 2021 and 2015, is not new. Most famously, in 1980, Ivo Pogorelich, a Croatian pianist who would go on to have an illustrious career, was eliminated from the competition before the final round because he was so polarizing. Half the jury rated him highly, the other half low enough to bring down his average and boot him from the competition. When Pogorelich made it past the first round, one jury member quit, saying, “If people like Pogorelich make it to the second stage, I cannot participate in the work of the jury.” When Pogorelich was later eliminated, Martha Argerich, one of the most respected pianists performing today, also resigned, but for the opposite reason, calling him a “genius.”
But there is perhaps an even more pressing question than how to conceive of artists who polarize juries: what happens when the audience falls in love with a pianist who just doesn’t impress the jury that much?
If Youtube commenters and even many music critics who closely followed this year’s Chopin Competition had a say, one of this year’s prizewinners would have been 24-year-old David Khrikuli, a Georgian pianist who made it to the final round but didn’t place. As it turns out, though some members of the jury were more impressed by him than others, their overall perception of Khrikuli just didn’t match the almost worshipful regard with which audiences held on to his every note. To ordinary people, he was magical, someone worth traveling to hear play live. To most of the jury, he was the ninth best pianist in the competition.
Many are calling it — and classical music competitions by extension — a scandal, a game of politics, corruption and intellectual snobbery, in which the most well-connected pianists do the best, and in which juries take into account a pianist’s aesthetic, mannerisms and even country of origin. In which juries are far too confident in their own beliefs about what Chopin would have done or how a piece ought to be played. Critics see competitions as an attempt to objectify the subjective.
Are they right? Other recent controversies in the piano competition circuit certainly help build a case. Take this year’s Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas, another of the world’s most respected classical music competitions. A 21-year-old Malaysian pianist named Magdalene Ho sits down at the bench. Her performance mesmerizes the audience and the public more broadly. Every note sparkles, and she plays with a genuine joy for and deep understanding of the music. She is called a once-in-a-generation talent. People already predict she will win the entire competition.
Instead, Ho is eliminated after the preliminary round. After the dust settles following the ensuing tornado that sweeps through the piano world, again that question nags: what do you make of competitions when the best-loved performers are rejected by the jury?
The top comment under a video reacting to Ho’s shocking elimination makes a suggestion: “well we are the final jury. Let’s give her a career.” Ho’s preliminary performance is now the most viewed among all preliminary contestants’, and it isn’t close. She may not have won the competition, but the buzz surrounding her and Khrikuli, who also participated in this year’s Cliburn and was eliminated after the quarterfinals, may outmatch even the competitions’ winners.
So maybe the question shouldn’t be what to make of competitions but instead, what does it matter? Competition juries look for a particular quality. Sometimes not all members of the jury even agree on what that quality is, but even when they do, and their perceptions and the public’s are misaligned, we choose who gets a career. An endorsement from a competition can help a performer’s career, but sometimes, it is that very lack of endorsement, something so unique and singular that perhaps turns a jury off for being too “out there” or “unorthodox,” that makes a pianist special to audiences. That was certainly the case for Pogorelich, who all these decades later is still performing to huge crowds. Competitions can kickstart the careers of those who win and those who lose. And that isn’t a bad thing at all.
Glenn Gould was one of the most eccentric, controversial pianists of the 20th century. His unorthodox interpretations of pieces would almost certainly have gotten eliminated from any of the biggest piano competitions. His reputation is still polarizing today. Yet this polarization reveals something quite profound about what music is all about anyway. When Gould played, he sought to “recompose” pieces, focusing more on how he felt they should sound than trying to predict or interpret what the composer would have wanted. Some may call this arrogant or conceited, but Arved Ashby, professor of musicology at Ohio State University, has a different take. He argues that Gould wasn’t in search of some higher truth about the music he played, a truth at which one can never really arrive. Instead, he was pragmatic. “Why don’t we just try to make it work for us here and now with the best things that we have at our disposal?” says Ashby of Gould’s philosophy.
If an audience will listen, does it really matter that much what a jury thinks or what a jury thinks about what the composer would have deemed acceptable? It’s perhaps a radical approach, but it may just be what makes so many come back to Gould and other artists again and again. Their recordings, whether you like them or not, are real.
Maybe that’s all that matters. “It’s good to take risks, and that taking risks means accepting the possibility that it could also be terrible,” said Ho in an interview for the Cliburn. “But that’s the fun part, right?”
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