Settling for second best isn’t always that bad. Yes, it’s true that Korea’s Seong-Jin Cho took the top honours at the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition, narrowly beating Quebec-born Charles Richard-Hamelin for the gold. But in order to come in second, Richard-Hamelin had to eclipse 498 other highly accomplished pianists. Ordinary mortals will likely be less discerning: viewing the video footage of Richard-Hamelin’s competition recitals, they’ll see only an astonishingly gifted musician, one fully capable of bringing contemporary verve to Frédéric Chopin’s almost 200-year-old compositions.

And even a second-place finish in Warsaw can mean quite a lot.

“There are four or five hundred piano competitions every year, international ones, but there’s only a handful of them that can change a young pianist’s life—and it certainly did for me, with the Chopin,” Richard-Hamelin tells the Straight from Alberta, where he’s performing with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. “Even though I didn’t win the competition, it feels like I did, because my whole life has changed. My international career, or the beginnings of my international career? It’s all thanks to the Chopin competition, really.”

Of course, it’s a little more complicated than that. For one thing, Richard-Hamelin can legitimately claim a direct link to the greatest Chopin interpreter of all time, Arthur Rubinstein, who was his teacher Janina Fialkowska’s mentor. And although Fialkowska offered all kinds of insight into Chopin’s compositional methods, not to mention tips on how to transfer his music from the 19th-century forte-piano to the 21st-century concert grand, Richard-Hamelin says that confidence was by far the most important thing she imparted.

“That’s what you need at this competition,” he explains. “You can practise endless hours and play your repertoire in concert all the time, but in the end you need a lot of confidence when you get into that room in Warsaw, in front of those 16 jury members and the tens of thousands of people who are watching online or on TV. You have to block it all off, and really believe that you’re the one that knows how the piece should go.”

It’s exactly that kind of chutzpah that allows Richard-Hamelin to approach Chopin’s music without the slightest fear of making a mistake. And it’s not that he doesn’t make mistakes; he’s just not afraid of them.

“Some people, especially with the competition, get so nervous they try to rehearse everything and play it exactly the way they planned it,” he explains. “Sometimes the music can sound a little bland, you know—a little too careful and prepared. And I’m really sort of allergic to that. If you listen to my performances, there are a lot of mistakes sometimes, but in the end that’s the price I have to pay in order to be communicative and emotional and present. Maybe I’m not perfect technically, but I think that’s a better price to pay than the other way around.”

The Vancouver Chopin Society presents Charles Richard-Hamelin at the Vancouver Playhouse on Sunday (November 6).