Abstract
The article aims at summarizing different activities undertaken to organize and run the first post- war Chopin piano competition. It is an attempt to collect facts, accounts and memories concerning actions initiated by Polish music culture environment after the Second World War. The author fo- cuses on a detailed description of the organization and proceedings of the 4th International Piano Competition, making use of information that has existed in independent sources so far. The article uses diaries, biographies, autobiographies, private notes, interviews with representatives of Polish culture, archive films and documentaries belonging to the Polish Film Chronicle. Press excepts were not used on purpose, as most press information was included in the aforesaid bibliography entries. The analyzed sources let us conclude that the organization of the first post-was Chopin piano competition in Warsaw was an event requiring both the engagement of all state institutions and personal contribution of musicians and music teachers. The author considers such a detailed historical-cultural account justified and necessary, especially in 2020, the 210th birth anniversary of Frederic Chopin, the year in which the 18th Frederic Chopin International Piano Competition was supposed to take place.
Highlights
The article aims at summarizing different activities undertaken to organize and run the first postwar Chopin piano competition
The author focuses on a detailed description of the organization and proceedings of the 4th International Piano Competition, making use of information that has existed in independent sources so far
The article uses diaries, biographies, autobiographies, private notes, interviews with representatives of Polish culture, archive films and documentaries belonging to the Polish Film Chronicle
Summary
The attack of the Nazi Germany on Poland in 1939, a nearly six-year occupation of our country filled with mass murdering of civilians, resulting in the destruction of Polish cultural heritage and achievements, led to a total collapse of Poland. Another Pole who had created music life of the country before WWII was Jerzy Waldorff He recalls attempts to resume the work of the Polish Radio, which started operating in the spring of 1945 and whose seat was at the beginning located in a private house at Targowa Street, in the district of Praga. During the first months after Poland’s liberation, the Frederic Chopin Association was reactivated and located in the ruins of Ostrogski Palace on Tamka Street, burnt by the Germans during the Warsaw Uprising These pioneering efforts organizing music life in the capital and Cracow were crowned in October 1945 by bringing back the urn with Chopin’s heart from Milanówek, where it had been hidden since the Warsaw Uprising. The fame and prestige of these competitions, growing in popularity in the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century, was quite a challenge for the cultural environment of the country which had just experienced the ordeal of war
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