Behind the scenes notes. 11th day

Monday was a day without auditions, and music bloggers and the media were engaged in a discussion about the list of 20 pianists who qualified for the third stage and those who did not advance to it.

Just before the results were announced after the second round on Sunday, jury chairman Garrick Ohlsson emphasized: ‘We have, I believe, a very high level and we, on the Jury, are very excited to see what’s going to happen next.’

Comments included regret that Jonas Aumiller from Germany, Yanyan Bao from China, and Yumeka Nakagawa from Japan, among others, would not be performing in the third round. Observers often point out that a large number of pianists participating in the Competition and advancing to the next rounds come from Asian countries. Although the number of Asian participants has been growing for years, and the Chopin traditions in Japan, China, and South Korea are becoming a permanent feature of local musical life, this still seems surprising to many commentators who argue that traditional Asian culture differs from that represented by Chopin’s works. 

But much can be learned about the performance of Chopin’s music in the Far East by reading articles written by local journalists. In her article ‘Chopin in Japan,’ Japanese pianist and teacher active around the world, Akemi Alink-Yamamoto, that the first piano came to Japan in 1823, brought to the Dejima island by German doctor Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold. That opened the door for European piano music of the time, including Frederic Chopin’s compositions. Chopin’s works made an impression in Japan, to the extent that in 1937 two Japanese pianists – Chieko Hara and Miwa Kai – took part in the Chopin Competition, the first ever participants from an Asian country. Hara was awarded a special prize by the audience.

Japanese music journalist Nobuko Fujimaki, who writes reviews for Japan’s piano monthly magazine ‘Chopin,’ when asked why the Polish composer is so popular in her country replied: ‘This is a very mysterious matter. Japanese people love beautiful things very much (…) and (…) also love songs very much.’  

Chopin’s music, Fujimaki explains, is pure beauty in itself, and it strikes the Japanese as familiar, among other things, due to its resemblance to the sentimental and emotional song genre known as enka. The journalist also believes that the success of Hiroko Nakamura at the 1965 Chopin Competition, winning fourth prize and subsequently touring the country with recitals, also contributed to Chopin’s enduring popularity in Japan. Interestingly, Nakamura noted that the main theme of the first movement of Chopin’s E minor Concerto ‘is exactly the same melody that exists in an enka (song).’

Chopin’s compositions have become so ingrained in the everyday lives of Japanese people that they appear in advertisements and animated films, among other things.

Monika Ścisłowska-Sakowicz