More than half a century ago, in 1956, the editorial committee chaired by Józef M. Chomiński founded the Rocznik Chopinowski [Chopin Yearbook]. The periodical, conceived as a joint effort of “music historians and theorists together with composers and performers,” as declared in the foreword, was intended to “deepen research into Chopin’s compositional mastery and to apply its findings to editorial work and artistic activity related to the interpretation of Chopin’s works.”

Both the forty-five-year period of the Rocznik publication (which later gave rise to the Chopin Studies series, collecting the most valuable materials from the Polish Rocznik in foreign-language versions), and – perhaps paradoxically, yet even more clearly – the seventeen-year hiatus in publishing subsequent issues (the last double volume appeared in 2001), as well as the activities observed within Polish and international musicological and artistic communities, attest to a significant need for a platform enabling substantive discussion, up-to-date information, and the consolidation of publishing and scholarly initiatives focused on the figure and legacy of the Polish composer.

Convinced of the necessity of a thematic, research-oriented Chopin journal, we are initiating the publication of two periodicals: The Chopin Review and Studia Chopinowskie. These will serve – on a global scale (the former) and a national Polish scale (the latter) –as forums for dialogue and the presentation of Chopin-related research, concerning either Chopin’s works and life directly or the broader cultural context essential to their understanding.