Twenty-year-old Rafal Blechacz has become the first Pole in 30 years to win the Chopin International Piano Competition, one of the world's most prestigious contests of its kind, organisers said on Saturday.
The last time a Pole won the 78-year-old competition was 1975, when Krystian Zimerman captured first place and went on to a brilliant musical career.
A total of 80 aspiring young pianists from 18 different countries entered this year's competition, named after 19th-century composer Fryderyk Chopin, Poland's greatest musical genius.
Mastery of Chopin's numerous compositions, which include folk motifs from his native Poland, has long been a yardstick against which pianists the world over have been judged.
"He so outclassed the remaining finalists that no second prize could actually be awarded," jury member Professor Piotr Paleczny said of Blechacz, who won $25,000 (14,000 pounds) and a gold medal presented by Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski.
Two third prizes were awarded to South Korean brothers Dong Hyek Lim and Dong Min Lim. Japanese pianists Takashi Yamamoto and Shohei Sekimoto shared fourth place, and the sixth prize went to Ka Ling Colleen Lee from Hong Kong.
Blechacz, who hails from the small northern town of Naklo and who also won the competition's mazurka, polonaise and concerto contests, was called "a new Chopin" by leading Polish musicologist Proessor Mieczyslaw Tomaszewski.
"Already when he was three or four he would go up to the old piano we had and plunk out melodies he had heard on radio and television by ear," Blechacz's father told the all-news channel
TVN24.
Prizewinners at the Chopin International Piano Competition, which is held in Warsaw every five years, nearly always look forward to a major musical career.
In 2007, Blechacz, a third-year student of the Bydgoszcz Academy of Music, hopes to go on a concert tour of Japan, where Chopin's music is especially beloved.
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