The Chopin Institute, operating under its full Polish name National Fryderyk Chopin Institute, was established in 2001 by an Act of the Polish Parliament with the objective of protecting the legacy of Fryderyk Chopin.
Fulfilling the responsibilities entrusted to it by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, the Institute pursues an extensive and ever-expanding programme of artistic, research/scholarly, educational, publishing, and promotional activities promoting and disseminating Chopin’s legacy in both its tangible and non-tangible dimensions.
The Institute operates on an international scale, most significantly, organising the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition. Hundreds of young pianists from all the world over vie to compete in the Competition, as winning is a passport to a global career and promises the winner a place among the world pianist elite.
The Institute focuses its artistic activities on concert and recording projects, and on support and sponsorship for young pianists.
Another remarkable and unique initiative is the International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments, held every four years. With two acclaimed editions, it has already revealed outstanding piano personalities and talents, in the realm of historically informed performance gaining a stature comparable to the prime and most prestigious music competitions of all times.
The universal nature of Chopin’s music, its supranational character, and unique importance to European culture as well as its profound significance for global music of the following centuries find its reflection in the programmes of the annual International Chopin and His Europe Music Festival. Since its inception, this festival, held annually, has distinguished itself from among other similar projects with its original concept and, with the passage of time, with then increasing share of participating soloists and ensembles of world renown, including many of the most famous, and legendary pianists.
The festival’s uniqueness is a product of its erudite programming bringing out new understandings of Chopin’s music by presenting it in contexts that are often far from obvious. For over two decades, Chopin and His Europe has maintained its position of one of the most original and crucial music festivals on the continent.
The lavish array of the Institute’s artistic productions extends beyond its flagship international Chopin Festival and Competition, and includes national Chopin competitions, annual concerts marking the successive anniversaries of the composer’s birth, performances of Mozart’s Requiem to commemorate the anniversaries of his death, and concert cycles at The Birthplace of Fryderyk Chopin in Żelazowa Wola and the Fryderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw, as well as promotion of young talents, to mention just a handful. It is further complemented by an outstanding catalogue of recordings, acclaimed by international critics and honoured with the world’s most prestigious awards.
“The Real Chopin. The Complete Works of Fryderyk Chopin on historical instruments” and “Chopin. Complete Works on contemporary instruments” have become legendary. The former represents a breakthrough in historically informed performance, making Chopin compositions in their original sonosphere accessible to an unprecedented scale.
The recordings rendering the historical sounds also extend to numerous CDs in the “Chopin’s Time Music” series. It is thanks to the albums published in this series that compositions by Ignacy Dobrzyński, Karol Lipiński, Józef Krogulski, Józef Nowakowski, Feliks Janiewicz, and Aleksander Duranowski have captured international audiences.
The cycle of albums with Stanisław Moniuszko’s operas and cantatas is a sensational success for the Institute. Moreover, it would be impossible to gloss over our remaining series – “Concerts Frozen in Time”, “Young Talents. Debuts”, “Chopin Competition – Portraits of the Best Participants”, “Resonance” (featuring the music of Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Andrzej Panufnik, among others), “Music Recommended by Chopin”, and the “Polish Romantic Jazz” including recordings of the rare and unforgettable improvisations by Tomasz Stańko.
Last but not least, there is the Institute’s catalogue of audio and video recordings that include the concert recordings by Martha Argerich and Maria João Pires, and of requiem masses by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johannes Brahms, and Gaetano Donizetti.
The Institute also co-produced Pianoforte, a documentary portraying the participants of the 18th Chopin Competition directed by Jakub Piątek that received multiple awards at the Millennium Docs Against Gravity Festival, was enthusiastically received at the Sundance Film Festival, and went on to win an Emmy Award: Poland’s first since 2012.
Research and publishing projects are an exceptionally important current in the Institute’s operation. The Institute publishes, among others, facsimile editions of Chopin’s works and two annual journals – Studia Chopinowskie and The Chopin Review, published in English – and organises international conferences and congresses.
The publications of the Institute reflect the kaleidoscope of themes circulating around and gravitating towards Chopin, and encompass conference and congress proceedings, biographies of Chopin and historical Chopinists, interviews with the most distinguished contemporary interpreters of his music, piano treatises and schools, popular science and academic books, photo books, as well as literary works, and books for younger readers.
Running invaluable projects devoted to the preservation and digitisation of Chopin’s heritage, Polish music, and related research resources, the Institute’s Library, Sound Library and Photo Archives boast a collection that comprises over 30 000 books and magazines, scores, and documents of social life from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, over 15,000 sound recordings, and over 86,000 negatives, positives, slides, microfilms, and photocopies of the items in the collection of the Fryderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw, other museums and libraries, and private collections in Poland and abroad.
It would be impossible to overestimate the Institute’s multi-faceted educational activity that extends to classes and lectures not only for children and youth, but also for adults. The offer for young pianists includes the annual masterclasses in Radziejowice, while aspiring journalists and future music writers are invited to music criticism workshops.
The collection of Chopiniana, gathered in the Fryderyk Chopin Museum and continuously expanded, is of fundamental significance for all the Institute’s endeavours. Unique on the international stage, it comprises autographs, volumes of first and later printed editions of Chopin’s works, iconographic materials, and the composer’s personal belongings. The Museum presents the world’s only permanent exhibition offering visitors one-of-a-kind comprehensive insight into the life and work of the Polish composer, alongside a unique opportunity to commune directly with original objects from the Chopin collection.
The narrative created by the permanent exhibition is complemented with numerous temporary exhibitions and by the symbolic significance of the Birthplace of Fryderyk Chopin and the Park in Żelazowa Wola – a branch of the Museum and a destination for Chopin aficionados from all over the world.
Among the Institute’s special collections, there is that of historical pianos and their replicas. More than masterpieces of the craft, they are above all instruments that are regularly put to use in concert performances, recordings released by the Institute (on the NIFC label), and during the Chopin Competition on Period Instruments. They include Chopin’s beloved Pleyel pianos, selectively sounding Érards, a London-made Broadwood, and an exceptional replica of a piano produced by the Warsaw-based Fryderyk Buchholtz, dating from c. 1825–26.
The Institute maintains an extensive network of international partnerships. Its ambition is to bring together and support the most valuable Chopin-related initiatives in Poland and abroad. Such cooperation often develops into extensive projects funded from EU funds, grants awarded under European Economic Area Grants programme, and supported by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland and sponsors, whose number includes Poland’s largest businesses such as ORLEN, PKO Bank Polski, Totalizator Sportowy, and PZU.
The Institute is also proud of its strong digital presence. Its YouTube channel, Chopin Institute, features a wealth of material from the Chopin Competitions and the Chopin and His Europe Festival, while its social media accounts are followed by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.
The portals the Institute has launched, notably Chopin Heritage in Open Access and the Polish Music Heritage in Open Access, are exceptionally significant for promoting Chopin’s legacy and Polish music culture. These two projects are among the largest endeavours in the field of content digitisation and provision of broad public access to Chopin collections and Polish music that had previously either been absent from, or only incidentally present in the digital repositories of Polish music. Other platforms, such as the Polish Musical Portal, and Between Chopin and Tellefsen. European Music Treatises, are the source of in-depth specialist knowledge. The Institute’s online presence is further enriched by mobile apps, notably the ones dedicated to the successive editions of the Chopin Competition.
