Competition Laureates | Janusz Olejniczak

The 8th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition, held in 1970, went down in history for at least several reasons. One of them was the change in date of the piano face-off from February to October. The reason for the change was ... care for the health of the young performers, especially guests from southern countries, whose harsh Polish winters simply "disqualified" with colds. The October climate was therefore to promote a more just competition.

The jury of the competition included such outstanding musicians as Regina Smendzianka, Witold Małcużyński, Tatjana Nikolajew, Jan Hoffman and Bolesław Woytowicz, and composer Kazimierz Sikorski (chairman). The edition of the 1970 competition is, above all, a great group of laureates with the winner American Garrik Ohlsson at the forefront, and the second prize winner Japanese Mitsuko Uchida. The laureate circle also included two Poles – Piotr Paleczny who took third place, and the youngest among the them, less than eighteen – Janusz Olejniczak, who came sixth.

For Olejniczak, who was born in 1952, a student of Ryszard Bakst and Zbigniew Drzewiecki, the Chopin Competition was not the first success in his pianistic career. Already in 1967 he had been a finalist in the International Competition of Young Performers, "Concertino Praha", and two years later performed at the International Tribune of Young Performers in Paris, thanks to which he was qualified to take part in a concert during MIDEM 1970 in Cannes. After the Chopin Competition, at the beginning of the 1970s, he continued his piano studies in Paris with Konstanty Schmaeling and Witold Małcużyński, and then in Warsaw with professor Barbara Hesse-Bukowska.

In the very rich artistic concert and recording output of Olejniczak, apart from his concerts almost all over the world, it is worth mentioning the world premiere of the composition "Valse Boston" for piano and orchestra by Giji Kanczeli from 1997, and participation in the film about Chopin "La note bleu" (Blue note) by Andrzej Żuławski (1991), where he played the composer himself, and also a recording of the soundtrack for the films "Chopin, the desire for love" by Jerzy Antczak and "Pianist" by Roman Polanski.