About VI Chopin Competition Edition

The 6th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition was held on the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. The year 1960 was proclaimed Chopin Year, under the patronage of UNESCO. Chopin’s music was present on every major concert platform.

As Stefan Wysocki recalls: ‘That was the competition which initiated both the decoration of the hall and the whole ritual of beginning all the auditions with a defilade of the candidates across the stage, the presentation by the programme announcer and all the rest of it, which competition observers know perfectly well and which – thanks to its constancy – sticks in one’s heart and mind’. That was also the start of the great career of the then eighteen-year-old Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini, winner of the First Prize. Among the 77 participants from 30 countries, only his name went down in the history of world pianism. The audience favourite, the Mexican Michel Block, the object of great excitement and rumours, failed to win a prize. Arthur Rubinstein, honorary chair of the jury, which was the largest in the Competition’s history, decided to respond to the mood in the hall and award Block an hors concours prize.

Incidentally, Rubinstein’s great love of doughnuts was revealed during the Competition. During the jury’s deliberations, doughnuts were supplied, along with other sweet treats, by Warsaw’s finest confectioners. Apparently, the great pianist’s appetite beat all records, with a dozen or so doughnuts a day representing no great challenge.