Pianist From Coronado Wins Chopin : Music: Kevin Kenner takes the prize in Warsaw competition with second place. No first was given.

WARSAW, Poland —  Kevin Kenner, a native of Coronado, Calif., was announced Saturday as the winner of the prestigious 12th International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition.

Kenner, 27, won second prize in the competition and the prize for the best performance of the polonaise, music for a stately Polish dance. For the first time in the 63-year history of the Chopin Competition the jury did not award a first prize.

Kenner, currently living in Hanover, Germany, is the second American to win the competition after Garrick Ohlsson, who won first prize in 1970.

“I am very happy,” a pale and exhausted Kenner declared after the announcement of the jury’s verdict early Saturday. Kenner joins a pantheon of laureates such as Martha Argerich of Argentina, Maurizio Pollini of Italy and Krystian Zimmerman of Poland.

Kenner failed to qualify for the finals of the competition 10 years ago but he said the past experience helped him feel more comfortable this time.

Kenner heard the jury’s verdict along with his wife, Sonia, and immediately afterward was invited by a German impresario for a concert tour in Germany.

Observers expressed some disappointment that the first prize was not awarded.

“It’s very strange, very interesting and I am sure there is some reason for it,” Kenner said about the decision not to award the first prize.

Third prize went to Yukio Yokoyama of Japan, fourth went to Corrado Rollero of Italy and Margarita Shevchenko of the Soviet Union, and fifth went to Anna Malikova of the Soviet Union and Takako Takahashi of Japan. Sixth prize was awarded to the competition’s youngest participant, Caroline Sagement of France.

More than 130 young pianists from 31 countries entered the four-stage competition, which can open concert halls of the world to the winner.

The United States was represented by 12 musicians, but only Kenner was admitted to the two highest stages.

In the three weeks of the prestigious competition, which opened Oct. 1, the pianists performed compositions by Chopin ranging from technically difficult studies and scherzos to such complex and mature forms as the sonata or the concerto.

Kenner’s choice was the concerto in E minor. In the second stage, which he called his best, he played the Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante, which brought him his other prize, shared with Wojciech Switala of Poland.

Queen Fabiola of Belgium came to Warsaw to hear the finalists play the concertos, while the competition’s opening ceremony was attended by Queen Sofia of Spain.

First-round contestants were asked for the first time to pay their hotel bills to help the Solidarity-led government meet its share of the $1-million bill to run the contest.