“Chopin can bring us together,” Lech Wałęsa has said, as the International Chopin Competition begins in Warsaw this weekend.

The Chopin Express, the official gazette of the competition has published a statement by former president Wałęsa, in which he says that Chopin was more than just an artist of world renowned.

“I admit that in my childhood and youth I knew and heard very little about Fryderyk Chopin. I became acquainted with his works in my mature years, when I was a worker, trade union activist and politician,” says the 1980s Nobel Peace Prize winner.

“For me Chopin is a national hero: he worked for the power of Poland and he glorified her name in music during the hard times of enslavement of our Motherland.

He composed works of a revolutionary nature that were a call to the arms, but also works that were extremely serious and sad, that were likely to remind his compatriots of their tragic situation.

The Chopin Year should calm our petty disputes, especially during the International Chopin Competition. It should activate us to remind ourselves of our tragic history and to respect the freedom we were fighting for, the freedom that the homesick and seriously ill Chopin head dreamed of in his beautiful works,” writes the Solidarity legend.

“In my opinion the music of Chopin, the music that the contemporary world knows and admires, will remain ‘great’ forever, and its creator, our great compatriot Fryderyk Chopin, is and shall remain in history as one of the greatest composers of the world.”

The Chopin Express is published by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in cooperation with Gramophone, the world’s leading classical music magazine.

The International Chopin Competition, which begins on Sunday morning, takes place every five years and is one of the most prestigious competitions, worldwide, for musicians of a single instrument. The competition was won in 2005 by Polish pianist Rafal Blechacz. (mk/pg)