Sixty-one years ago, in 1956, an editorial committee led by Józef M. Chomiński established the ‘Rocznik Chopinowski’ / ‘Annales Chopin’. The purpose of that periodical, designed as a collaborative project of ‘music historians and theorists with composers and performers’ (as the editors declared in the foreword), was to ‘enhance research into Chopin’s compositional mastery and to use its findings in editorial and artistic work relating to the interpretation of Chopin’s works’.

The need for a publication of this kind – providing a forum for the dissemination of research on Chopin and his oeuvre, for vigorous debate and for current information – is greater than ever before. Although the ‘Annales’ and its successor ‘Chopin Studies’ (which assembled the most valuable material from the Polish ‘Rocznik’ in foreign-language versions) were produced over forty-five years, no less than seventeen years have elapsed since the last issue appeared – a double volume published in 2001. Since then, Polish and international musicological and artistic activities focused on Chopin have been extremely rich, yet there has been no effective way of representing and consolidating them in a single publication.

We are therefore convinced of the indispensability of a thematic Chopin periodical dedicated primarily to scholarly research. To that end, we are delighted to announce the launch of two new journals: ‘The Chopin Review’ and ‘Studia Chopinowskie’. The first of these will address a global audience, while the latter will be targeted at a Polish readership. Both are intended to offer a forum for dialogue and for the presentation of specialist research into Chopin, his work and its cultural contexts.