About IV Chopin Competition Edition

The Competition was financed from government funds, as were grants and training camps for the Polish pianists. The young musicians were given access to the best pianos, test recordings were made, and the Poznań Philharmonic Orchestra was even brought in to a summer course held in Łagów Lubuski, so that the course participants could practise the concertos with its accompaniment. Those were conditions that Polish pianists could only have dreamt of up to then. The whole programme of preparations was overseen by a Pedagogic Committee attached to the Ministry of Culture and the Arts, comprising pre-eminent Polish teachers, who followed the progress of each of the participants. The collective work brought excellent results: an exceptionally strong contingent was formed, which made a clean sweep of the podium places (the Polish pianist Halina Czerny-Stefańska shared first place with the Russian Bella Davidovich). 

The Competition was divided into three stages, with the addition of a qualifying round without audience (this was for candidates who had not taken part in national qualifying rounds). During the first two rounds, the jury listened behind wooden shutters, so as not to see who was playing. The competitors performed not under their names, but with numbers they had drawn. This was an experiment that failed to catch on and has never been repeated. An innovation for the third round was the performance of a concerto in its entirety (previously, only two movements were played), and the upper age limit was raised to thirty-two.