Image credit: Footage from Telewizja Polska Archives. Martha Argerich in the final round of the 7th Chopin Competition, 1965.

Introduction

The International Chopin Piano Competition, held every five years in Warsaw, is one of the most prestigious piano competitions in the world, with winners including such famous performers as Maurizio Pollini, Martha Argerich, Krystian Zimmerman, Garrick Ohlsson, Dang Thai Son, and Yundi Li. In this competition, performers are asked to prepare programs consisting entirely of works by Frederic Chopin, spanning his entire output.

The 18th competition was held in October, 2021, and was open to pianists born between 1990 and 2004. The competition consisted of a preliminary round, three main competition rounds, and a final round, with the field of pianists narrowing at each step. There were strict repertoire requirements for each of the competition stages such that pianists were evaluated on similar criteria. For instance, in the first main stage, pianists were asked to play two etudes from a specified list, one piece from a specified list of select nocturnes and the slow etudes, and a large-scale work from a specified list; in the final round, pianists were asked to play either of Chopin’s concertos*.

Project objectives

Your goal is two-fold. First, create an interesting descriptive analysis of the entire competition that describes at least one interesting aspect of the competition. What trends or patterns might you be able to visualize or describe?

Secondly, you must evaluate whether there might be potential “repertoire effects.” In the final round of the 17th competition, 9 finalists played the e minor concerto and only 1 finalist playing the f minor concerto. Are certain repertoire choices associated with better competition outcomes (for instance, in the first main stage, do ballades or scherzos do “better”)?

Clearly write any model(s) using correct mathematical notation. Care should be made to use readily-interpretable models, with conclusions and interpretations able to be understood by allied researchers and the knowledgeable public.

Detailed instructions, the data, and data descriptions are available in the course GitHub repository.

Learning objectives

  • Solidify skills in reproducible research and programming, including version-control and collaboration via GitHub
  • Critically think about reasonable analysis approaches in the context of real-world data
  • Express statistical models clearly and correctly
  • Develop scientific writing skills by providing clear, concise, data-driven conclusions suitable for allied researchers

Project timeline

  • Group: Report and reproducible code
    • Due Friday, February 25
  • Group: Revised report and response to reviewers
    • Due Friday, March 18

Note: each team’s GitHub report repository and commit history will also be evaluated by the instructor. The GitHub repository must contain the reproducible R Markdown document corresponding to the submitted reports, and will be checked throughout the course of the case study to ensure all team members are making meaningful contributions to the project.

References

[1] XVIII Konkurs Chopinowski, Warszawa. https://chopin2020.pl/en/. Accessed January 1, 2022.

  • shout-out to the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra in 2015 who had to basically sit through accompanying 9 e minor concertos in a row, RIP.