Piotr Pawlak

Piotr Pawlak is one of the most versatile Polish pianists of the young generation. Winner of many international competitions, including the 5th Maj Lind International Piano Competition in Helsinki (2022) and the 11th International Chopin Piano Competition in Darmstadt (2017), laureate of Chopin Competitions in Beijing (2016), Budapest (2018) and Cracow (2019), the International Competition of Polish Music in Rzeszów (2019), the International Paderewski Competition in Bydgoszcz (2022) and the International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments in Warsaw (2023).

He regularly performs concerts worldwide, having appeared at numerous musical events in most European countries, as well as in the United States, Canada, China and Japan. As a soloist, he has played with the Warsaw National Symphony Orchestra, Bohemian Symphony Orchestra, Ningbo Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and others. He has performed at prestigious venues such as the Berliner Philharmonic, Sankt Petersburg Philharmonic, Sala Verdi in Milan and Teatro alla Scala, and has participated in renowned festivals such as Kissinger Sommer in Bad Kissingen and Chopin and his Europe in Warsaw.

In the 2024/2025 season, he performed in Canada, Japan, Venezuela, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, the United Kingdom, France, Hungary and Poland, cooperating with e.g. Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra, Warsaw Radio Symphony Orchestra and Sinfonia Baltica. In January 2025, a recording of chamber music by the Polish composer Józef Elsner, featuring the Wroclaw Baroque Orchestra musicians, was released – marking the premiere of these works on period instruments. In February 2025, Piotr’s debut solo album with music by Fryderyk Chopin was issued, recorded during the 2nd International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments.

Piotr Pawlak began his musical education on the piano at the age of six in Feliks Nowowiejski Music School in Gdansk with Ewa Włodarczyk, and then he continued to study with Waldemar Wojtal until the end of his studies in 2021. He also graduated music school finishing in organ studies, under the tutorship of Hanna Dys, and in 2026 he completed his master’s degree in conducting under the supervision of Zygmunt Rychert. He attended masterclasses with distinguished musicians such as Kevin Kenner, Dang Thai Son, Dmitrii Alexeev, Eugen Indijc, Phillippe Giusano, Dina Yoffe, Katarzyna Popowa-Zydroń, Wojciech Świtała and Janusz Olejniczak. From 2024 he is also a student of the prestigious International Piano Academy Lake Como.

Piotr Pawlak is dedicated to reviving improvisation in the classical music world. He draws inspiration from historically informed performance practices, incorporating elements such as improvised cadenzas in Mozart’s piano concertos. At the Chopin Competition in Darmstadt, in addition to winning first prize, he received a special award for the best improvisation on the themes from Der Freischütz. In 2020, he was awarded second prize on the Transatlantyk Instant Composition Contest at the International Film Festival in Katowice.

Beyond his career as a pianist, Piotr has also been a laureate of organ competitions and of national and international olympiads in mathematics, informatics and other sciences. After finishing his Master’s degree in Mathematics at the University of Gdansk in 2020, he is preparing a PhD dissertation about mapping class groups of non-orientable surfaces.