Chopin piano competition contestant visibly moved to tears while playing the ‘Raindrop’ prelude

13 October 2025, 17:56 | Updated: 16 October 2025, 15:59

Yumeka Nakagawa performs Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude

The pianist couldn’t hold back tears as she played one of the world’s most moving pieces of music.

A 24-year-old Japanese pianist was moved to tears during her own performance of Frédéric Chopin’s Prelude, Op.28, No.15, also known as his ‘Raindrop’ prelude. The repeated A flat note throughout the piece has been likened to the gentle patter of raindrops.

Yumeka Nakagawa was performing all 24 of Chopin’s Preludes, Op.28 in the second round of the 19th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition. As she moved into the B section of the piece, where the music moves to a minor key with a new melody, Nakagawa began to appear emotional.

By the end of the section, tears were visibly falling down her cheeks as she played.

When she reached the final section of the ‘Raindrop’, she smiled as she continued to shed a few more tears, performer beautifully imitating music.

She finished the gentle prelude with her face up to the ceiling and her eyes closed, before bursting into the drama of the Prelude No.16.

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The ‘Raindrop’ Prelude is part of one of Chopin’s piano cycles, where he uses a circle of fifths to guide him through all major and minor keys, with each major key followed by its relative minor – this one is in D flat major. No.15 is one of the longest of his preludes, taking between five and seven minutes to play, with the whole cycle taking about 45 minutes all the way through.

It was rumoured that this piece was inspired by a love story: In 1838, Chopin spent the winter on the island of Mallorca with his lover, George Sand. According to letters they sent home to friends, the trip was filled with trials and challenges, not being able to find lodgings and encountering hostility from locals. They eventually settled in an empty monastery near Palma.

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In Sand’s autobiography, Histoire de Ma Vie, she wrote that one evening, she found Chopin sat at the piano, frozen in fear.

“He saw himself drowned in a lake,” she wrote, “Heavy drops of icy water fell in a regular rhythm on his breast, and when I made him listen to the sound of the drops of water indeed falling in rhythm on the roof, he denied having heard it. He was even angry that I should interpret this in terms of imitative sounds.

“He protested with all his might – and he was right to – against the childishness of such aural imitations. His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds.”

Although it is not certain what Chopin played her, critics assume it was No.15. Whether that tale is entirely truthful or not, the piece has become associated with the unrelenting rain that tormented the lovers that winter.

The Chopin Competition, first held in Warsaw in 1927, has taken place every five years since 1955.