Since its foundation in 2010, the Egypt-based competition has steadily grown.
Dedicated solely to the music of Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849), the Polish composer whose name is synonymous with the piano, the competition is organised by the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Cairo, in collaboration with Rahn Education, a German educational body with branches worldwide, as well as the Cairo Opera House, which hosts the winners’ final performance.
This year marked the ninth round of the competition, with 30 applicants participating across four categories. The jury — maestro Ahmed Al-Saedi (Egypt), pianist and professor Mariola Cieniawa-Puchala (Poland), and professor Helgeheide Schmidt of Leipzig’s University of Music and Theatre (Germany) — announced the winners: Carla Soliman (11) claimed the first prize in Category A (12 years and under), Youssef Margawe (15) won in Category B (ages 13-15), Ali Abdel-Razek (17) earned first prize in Category C (ages 16-19), and in Category D (ages 20-24), while Hala Haytham received the top award. The young pianists are students of renowned Egyptian pianists Iman Noureddin Wahba (Hala and Carla) and Dina Al-Laithy (Youssef and Ali).
Margawe was recognised as “the most outstanding pianist of the competition” and praised for “the finest rendition of a composition by Chopin.” Haytham received a special prize for “the most compelling interpretation of a classical piece.”
However, the prize is not limited to performance on Cairo’s prestigious stage. The young talents are also awarded an extremely valuable trip: a cultural journey to Poland, where they walk in Chopin’s footsteps, visiting the places that shaped him and experiencing the culture that nurtured his art.
Warsaw was the first stop for the Egyptian pianists. There they visited the Chopin Museum and Chopin University of Music, meeting the vice-president of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute and attending a Sunday Chopin concert in the Royal Łazienki Park as well as another in the Old Town. The trip always includes an extensive tour and a concert at Żelazowa Wola, the village 50 km west of Warsaw that was the composer’s birthplace. It was the young pianists’ good fortune that, during their visit, the village was celebrating the Festival of Regional Culture, allowing the Egyptian artists to experience Polish folk dances first hand.
This year, the journey also took the pianists to the city of Lublin, where a crucial attraction is the Lublin Village Open Air Museum, one of the largest open air ethnographic museums in Poland, designed to recreate and preserve the traditional rural life of the country’s east. This element gave the pianists a broader cultural backdrop regarding Polish history, folklore, and nature — elements that are embedded in Chopin’s music. Not surprisingly, they did not skip the opportunity to try a piano located in one of the village’s houses.
Another city on the itinerary was Toruń, one of Poland’s most important historical and cultural venues and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was briefly the political capital of Poland (1454-1466), and the birthplace of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), the Polish polymath and astronomer who proposed the heliocentric model of the universe. There the group visited the Nicolaus Copernicus House, and the Museum of Toruń Gingerbread (pierniki toruńskie), which has stood there since the Middle Ages, a symbol of the city’s identity and wealth.
On each trip, the young participants are accompanied by Marcin Grodzki from the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Oriental Faculty of the University of Warsaw. This year, they were also joined by Mona Ragy Enayat from Rahn Education. An Egyptian-German visual artist, poet, and cultural educator, Enayat is based in Leipzig.
As Enayat notes, “the trip instills something extremely valuable in the minds of young pianists, and helps them create a strong relationship with Polish culture and Chopin. I was so happy when the participants enjoyed each element of the trip. When they entered Chopin’s house and museum, touching the composer’s life, passion marked their eyes. Those five days created a lifelong impact on them. They saw that music is not just about technical skills but about culture in a large sense. It also created strong bonds between all of us.”
Equally, Grodzki sees the trip as a great opportunity for the young performers to encounter Polish culture. At the same time, however, he recognises the young pianists’ skills, which they demonstrated at every place that housed a piano. “I am truly impressed by the level they represent as artists. They play beautifully, with passion and dedication. I think they can become very accomplished musicians.”
Indeed, the experience was not all sightseeing. It also involved immersing themselves in the culture shaping the music they performed. Not only did the trip retrace Chopin’s legacy, it also acquainted the participants with the living fabric of Polish culture itself. From music and folklore to historic cities and rural traditions, each encounter revealed a new layer of Polish society.
For the 11-year-old Carla Soliman, the youngest of the winners, this was her first trip to a European country. While she admitted the schedule was “very dense,” Poland surprised her. “It was much more beautiful than I imagined. I liked the beautiful churches and the creativity in the cities, as well as the musicians and artists performing on the streets.”
She described her experience as one that will “affect my life forever. We attended a number of concerts; I witnessed how different people played. This will definitely enrich my performance skills.” Soliman only began playing piano two years ago, and shows her unfolding passion for the instrument. “I was very drawn to the piano,” she shares. “Today, my teachers say I have talent, and encourage me to continue in a professional way.”
At 15, Youssef Margawe speaks of Chopin with a lot of emotion: “Chopin knows how to express things that words cannot. He is among my favourite composers. When I play Chopin, I always want to continue… I want to remain in his world.” For him, the trip was essential to understanding not just the music but the man behind it. “I needed to understand where Chopin lived, what he was experiencing. When we visited his home in Żelazowa Wola, and attended the concert there, I felt like, ‘Really? Chopin lived here?’ I was amazed by nature and the surroundings.” Margawe found the Chopin Museum equally impressive. “I saw his manuscripts, his handwriting, and how he thought about music. Many questions I had were answered.”
And the experience continued with the open air concert in Royal Łazienki Park as the young pianist noticed the large number of people seated on the grass enjoying the music. “It was unusual for me. In Egypt, people are not that aligned with Western classical music. To see Polish people loving this music was a wonderful experience.” Margawe seems to have developed renewed thirst for knowledge and exploration of Chopin’s homeland. “Now I’m not thinking if I return to Poland, but rather how I will do it,” he concluded.
For his part, 17-year-old Ali Abdel-Razek was visiting Poland for the second time. His first visit was an award for his 2023 win in the same competition. He comments, “this time felt very different, with new cities, new experiences.” Just like his younger colleague, Abdel-Razek was especially moved by people who “deeply understand Chopin’s music. Just listening to high-level performers was so beneficial. Honestly, when I went home after last time’s visit, I felt I had improved without even doing anything. I understood the style much better and I had matured as a performer, even if only in a small way.”
This time, he says, the trip and new experiences have definitely enriched him as an artist, adding knowledge and depth. He particularly praises the visit to Żelazowa Wola as well as meeting the vice-president of the Chopin Institute. “Even though I don’t plan to study in Poland, this meeting satisfied my curiosity about the competition.” Of course, Abdel-Razek holds Chopin close to his heart. “Chopin is my favourite composer, though he is also the hardest composer to interpret — not technically, but emotionally. Maybe that’s why the Chopin Competition is the hardest in the world. His music contains every emotion a person feels, and those are things we can all relate to.”
For Hala Haytham (21), the oldest member of the group, this was also her second time in Poland, yet she too found new inspiration in it. “My first visit was nine years ago; I was just 12-years-old. This time, while the programme enabled me to see new and different things. I also absorbed the whole experience differently.” She comments on how impressed she was with the richness of Polish culture and history. “I also learned a lot about Polish people. Take the Old Town in Warsaw as an example. It was rebuilt from scratch… There is this big determination in Polish people,” she comments on the destruction of Warsaw’s Old Town during World War II, when it was reduced to ruins before being meticulously rebuilt in the post-war years.
Haytham goes on to say how the trip enriched her on a musical level. “On the one hand, the fact that I travelled with other musicians, and we became close friends, means a lot. On the other hand, the trip’s creative impact is undeniable. This comes from witnessing Chopin’s life — a fact that added so much to my knowledge. When I return to his music now, I will understand more of what he was feeling. I can understand his thought process better.”
Together, the voices of Carla, Youssef, Ali, and Hala reflect the profound purpose of the competition and its accompanying trip. It is not simply about performing and winning, but about artistic growth: an extremely valuable opportunity offered to the competition participants. The trips organised for the winners are a true highlight, cherished by the young pianists. Over those few days, they come to realise that artistry is not born of technique and endless practice alone, but also of lived experience: walking the paths Chopin once knew, seeing the nature he admired, or attending folk performances that resonated deeply with him.
For the Egyptian pianists, Chopin’s presence feels as vivid as ever. It is enough to recall Chopin’s writings as a teenager, with letters styled like a local newspaper giving observations of rural life: animals, nature, small day-to-day events. While these are more anecdotal than poetic, they reflect his early responsiveness to nature and the Polish countryside. In a more serious letter to his friend Tytus Wojciechowski on 4 September 1830, Chopin wrote: “There is some kind of power in nature,” capturing his profound bond with homeland and landscape. Many of his letters describe the Polish countryside with nostalgia and reverence, often linking natural scenes to his moods.
These impressions, additionally steeped in folklore, gave rise to the pastoral lyricism of his work: Polonaises sometimes linked to landscapes in sound, with stormy passages echoing turbulent skies and fields, or Mazurkas that pulse with the rhythms of rural dance.
Today, those emotions, memories of nature and echoes of Polish folklore travel back with the young pianists, enriching their artistic lives in Egypt. Indeed, the Chopin Competition has grown into more than just a stage for young pianists. It has become one of the most meaningful bridges between the two cultures. For the young artists, it offers a chance to look beyond the notes on a page and discover the lived experience that gives Chopin’s music its depth.
For those four pianists — and the many who travelled to Poland during past rounds — Chopin’s works now carry a new resonance, enriched by memory: the echo of their own footsteps in Warsaw, the sound of the Vistula, the sight of manuscripts in the composer’s hand. Perhaps, in their own performances, Egyptian audiences will not only hear Chopin’s voice but also that of four young musicians who discovered a new relationship with him.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 2 October, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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