Fryderyk Chopin Institute: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 18th Chopin Competition has been moved to 2021. The Competition will take place at the Warsaw Philharmonic from 2 to 23 October 2021.
Poland’s Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Piotr Gliński, together with Artur Szklener, Director of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw, decided to move the Competition from October 2020 to October 2021 after additional consultations with Poland’s Ministry of Health.
Here is what Professor Piotr Gliński, Minister of Culture and National Heritage, had to say about the reasons for postponing the Chopin Competition till 2021:
“All the tickets for this year’s Chopin Competition were sold out in just three hours! People en masse from all over the world wanted to attend this great musical event. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, we cannot guarantee that in October this year it will be possible to hold mass audience events. I think we all agree that the Competition without an audience – although technically feasible – would not be a great idea.
The restrictions currently in place around the world also make it essentially impossible to prepare participants for the eliminations and the competition proper. For these reasons, the decision to postpone the Chopin Competition till 2021 was difficult, but necessary.”
In the words of Artur Szklener: “We are sparing no effort to make sure that the 18th Chopin Competition will be as good as we all expected and that it will continue the great tradition forged over the decades. The Fryderyk Chopin Institute is working intensely to make the move from 2020 to 2021 run as smoothly as possible”.
