Pole wins 1st Int’l Chopin Competition on Historical Instruments

Second Prize was shared by Poland’s Aleksandra Świgut and Naruhiko Kawaguchi of Japan, while Third Prize went to Krzysztof Książek of Poland, who also received a special award for best interpretation of a Chopin mazurka.

The remaining finalists, Dmitri Ablogin of Russia and Antoine Grolee of France, received honourable mentions.

In the finals, all of them performed a Chopin concerto while accompanied by the period-instrument Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century under Polish conductor Grzegorz Nowak.

Książek was the only finalist to perform Chopin’s Concerto in E-minor.

Ritter, aged 23, studied piano performance in his hometown of Lublin as well as in the Polish capital Warsaw. He is currently studying at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Music in Moscow under Mikhail Voskresensky (piano), Maria Uspenskaya (harpsichord) and Alexei Lubimov (historical piano).

Ritter’s successes include the top prize at the “Artur Rubinstein in Memoriam” International Competition for Young Pianists in Bydgoszcz, Poland, in 2011. His debut CD, released in 2014, featured a selection of works by Bach, Beethoven, Szymanowski and Ginastera.

Thirty pianists from nine countries took part in the First International Chopin Competition on Historical Instruments, which was held by the National Chopin Institute in Warsaw.

(mk/gs)