A prestigious music prize was renamed after a string of ladies claimed the instructor it honoured had sexually abused them as teenagers.
The Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester awards the Ryszard Bakst memorial prize for the simplest Chopin playing. But after the Guardian revealed that five women had come forward to accuse Bakst of molesting them before his death in 1999, the faculty has decided to rename the prize.
When the once a year award is gifted on Wednesday 27 March, it will likely be called the RNCM prize for Chopin, said a school spokeswoman, a call prompted by “recent comments within the media”.
One of Bakst’s victims, a Polish woman taught by him in Warsaw and Manchester, said it was “the least the school could do”. The previous pupil, Woman Q, said he groped her during lessons for a few years.
“Chopin was so almost about Bakst’s heart. He was one of these great patriot, coming from the rustic of Chopin’s birth, that once his death his body was taken to be buried in Poland. It’s therefore very sad that here is happening,” she said.
“However, now that every one this came out it truly is probably better, since he’s dead and can’t be punished, for the name change to behave as a token to honour the emotions of your complete women after what he has done. It is the least that the school could do when you consider that he can’t be delivered to justice, to respect those women who still live with those unpleasant memories.”
Other women told the Guardian Bakst would feel their breasts and put his hand up their skirts or force them to the touch his erection. Some were aged under 16 on the time.
Bakst taught at Chetham’s and the RNCM for just about 30 years after being expelled from his native Poland in 1968 when the Polish authorities finished their notorious Jewish purge.
