Kevin Chen, a 20-year-old pianist from Calgary, has finished second at the 19th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw while American Eric Lu went home with the gold.
Chen was one of 11 finalists who performed a concerto with the Warsaw Philharmonic and conductor Andrey Boreyko in the competition’s final round, held on Oct. 18, 19 and 20. Of the 84 total competitors at this year’s event, there were five Canadians, including Victoria Wong, Ryan Wang, Eric Guo and Athena Deng.
The winner was chosen after several hours of deliberations by a 17-person international jury chaired by American pianist Garrick Ohlsson. First prize in the 98-year-old competition comes with a cash prize of 60,000 euro, or about $98,000 Cdn, and a gold medal from the president of Poland.
Chen will get a silver medal and 40,000 euro (about $65,000 Cdn) while China’s Zitong Wang, who came third in the contest, will go home with a bronze medal and 35,000 euro (about $57,000 Cdn).
Chen started studying the piano when he was five years old, and made his orchestral debut two years later with the Abbotsford Youth Orchestra. In 2013, when Chen was just eight years old, he made it onto CBC Music’s annual list of 30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30.
In 2023, he won first prize ($51,000) in the Arthur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv; in 2022, he won first prize ($27,000) at the Geneva International Music Competition; and in 2021 he won first prize ($45,000) in the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition in Budapest.
The Calgarian is now based in Hanover, Germany.
To reach the competition’s final stage, Chen advanced through a preliminary round held in April and May (171 pianists took part), and then performed three successive solo recitals in October: Stage 1 (84 pianists), Stage 2 (40 pianists) and Stage 3 (20 pianists).
He chose to perform Chopin’s Piano Concerto in E Minor, Op. 11, for the final.
Canadian pianists have found success at the past two editions of the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition: Montreal’s Bruce Liu won the gold medal in 2021 (held one year later than planned due to the COVID-19 pandemic), and Joliette, Que., pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin won the silver medal in 2015. Vietnamese Canadian pianist Dang Thai Son won the gold medal in 1980.
The International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition takes place every five years around Oct. 17, the date of Chopin’s death. Its first prize laureate is catapulted into the international spotlight with a busy schedule of concert engagements around the world and high-profile recording projects.
Past laureates include Maurizio Pollini (1960), Martha Argerich (1965), Garrick Ohlsson (1970), Krystian Zimerman (1975), Đặng Thái Sơn (1980), Yundi Li (2000) and Seong-Jin Cho (2015).
