After the triple tribute to George Sand, this is the other event of the Nohant Chopin Festival which will take place from June 6 to July 22, 2026: for the first time, the organizers are launching the first international Chopin Pleyel competition in Nohant. It will take place from August 15 to 23, an idea from the president of the festival, Yves Henry, who travels the world all year round. Also a member of the Chopin Institute in Warsaw, he used his contacts and his international network. “I already organize a national competition every 2 years in Tokyo in Japan to detect young Japanese talent.â€
In Nohant, around thirty young pianists, aged between 17 and 31, were selected from around the world. “We had to select twenty-four but ultimately we selected twenty-eight. They come from four continents as well as Australia, North America, Asia (Japan, China, Korea) and of course Europe with French and Italians.précise Yves Henry.
“An event in their life”
The young pianists will play the works of Frédéric Chopin composed in Nohant. Which already brings emotion to the candidates who are preselected. “We asked them to make a short video each of one minute to introduce themselves, says Yves Henry, and most of the time they tell us that coming to play Chopin’s music in the place where it was composed and, moreover, on a stage where the greatest pianists in the world have come since 1966, is an event in their lives.”
28
Like the number of young pianists who will participate in this first international piano competition organized in Nohant. They come from the four corners of the planet.
The future stars of classical music will play in front of an international jury composed, among others, of an American, a professor at Yale, the head of the piano department of the Central Conservatory of Beijing, but also a Polish woman and a Japanese woman who are part of the Chopin competition in Warsaw. The public will be able to attend this competition with €70,000 in prizes.
