< A half-century of emotion...
< The Competition venues
< Weathering time
< East and West
< Violin, piano, singing
< Set Works and the Composition Competition
< Orchestras
< The Juries
< Jury presidents
< The Media

A half-century of emotion…


The formula might make some chagrined soul smile.
And yet, scientific proof of its futility is not about to be produced. The Queen Elisabeth Competition has for fifty years provided an extremely broad palette of emotions for music lovers: passion, joy, sadness, commitment, argumentation… communion with music, in spite of all the reproaches or reserves one might have from time to time. Above all, it is a slice of life in which culture seems to gain a little ground on the crises, rationalisations, epidemics, rain and conflicts.
And, lastly, it is a complex and elaborate phenomenon that resists any kind of generalisation: not one sociologically coherent public, but thousands of spectators, tens of thousands of television viewers and radio listeners. Not thoroughbred laureates, but young people, each with his or her individual history, state of mind, a potentiality that is ever fragile and dependent on infinitely varied factors. Not "the same old concerto again", but a repertory that is on the whole rich and varied, open to its own century and to the intimacy of the sonata or the lied.
Of course, not every session can be, every day, a "calm sea and prosperous voyage". But this anniversary, with its retrospective glance of almost unhoped-for breadth, fills us - whatever our generation - with strong and lasting memories: Kogan, Fleisher, Senofski, Ashkenazy, Laredo, Frager, Michlin… Znaider, Samoshko, Lemieux… let us stop here. The fiftieth anniversary releases will help us retrace this musical itinerary.
And so, at a time when live broadcasts have come into their own, let us fearlessly and self-confidently reassert a half-century of emotion!

It all started around 1900 with the meeting of two outstanding personalities and the consequent flood of novel and highly promising projects. The one, Elisabeth von Wittelsbach, a duchess in Bavaria, had just married Crown Prince Albert of Belgium and had moved to Brussels. By her father, a military man turned eminent ophthalmologist and a pioneer of cataract operations, she had inherited, among other things, an overwhelming passion for music, and she was herself a good violinist. The other, Eugène Ysaÿe, had just reached the pinnacle of an exceptional career, one that befitted his talent. The first performer of Franck’s Violin Sonata, of Debussy’s Quartet, of Chausson’s Poème, he had also founded a memorable quartet, a duet with Raoul Pugno which remoulded the traditional recital, and a prestigious symphonic society that explored the repertory of modern music. He also taught at the Brussels Conservatory and performed in every continent, hailed as the most famous virtuoso of the day.

When Albert became king, Belgium acclaimed a Queen whose love of art was not the least of her qualities. In 1912 Ysaÿe was appointed Royal Music Director, though this honour hardly suited his more active ambition which lay in the direction of the Brussels Conservatory. This latter appointment had escaped him. His decline as a virtuoso gradually distanced him from the concert stage, just as war had distanced him from Belgium. Music Director of the Cincinnati Orchestra from 1918 to 1922, Ysaÿe was never again able to find a suitable position in post-war Belgium. Being an apostle of post-romanticism and a virtuoso-composer, and being into the bargain old and ill, was not looked on with a favourable eye in the period of the Groupe des Six, Stravinsky and the Second Viennese School! Ysaÿe composed a musical testament of striking importance (the six Sonatas for solo violin), and, surrounded by the warmth of his intimates, such as Queen Elisabeth, but also Thibaud, Kreisler, Cortot, Casals, Szigeti, he enjoyed the life of a retired virtuoso tempered by the regular activity of a conductor and a composer of works of varying importance. His projects, however, did not come to fruition.

Already in the 1900s Ysaÿe had a clear idea of a what an international competition should be like. As a friend of Anton Rubinstein, he was acquainted with the competition that bore the latter’s name; several of his friends and partners had been laureates, among them Ferruccio Busoni and Émile Bosquet. The Rubinstein Competition, held every five years and open to pianists and composers, was never continued after the Russian Revolution. As for the Warsaw Chopin Competition founded in 1927, though it might have been considered a model piano competition, it was essentially intended to cultivate good performers of Chopin. What Ysaÿe wanted was a competition for young virtuosos with extremely broad-ranging programmes that included contemporary music, that brought out the technical and artistic maturity of the candidates and that would launch them on their careers. It was with this in mind that he thought of including an unpublished set work that would be studied in confinement without the help of anyone, least of all a candidate’s teacher: the ultimate test.
Queen Elisabeth could not set up such a competition over night. Ysaÿe died in 1931, shortly after the creation of the Queen Elisabeth Music Foundation. Subsequently, the economic crisis, the accidental death of King Albert followed by that of his daughter-in-law Queen Astrid, had temporarily put into abeyance any large-scale artistic projects. Only in 1937 was the first Ysaÿe Competition held. An international jury of exceptionally high standing was eager to accept the invitation. The sessions included set works, though not unpublished ones; candidates flocked to apply. The prestige of Ysaÿe’s name, coupled with that of the Belgian Court - the late King Albert and Queen Elisabeth were among the most universally admired heroes of the First World War - brought together in Brussels the elite of the violin world.

The results of the sessions created a profound impression: the Soviet school, with an assurance that bordered on arrogance, carried off all the prizes from the first down. The latter was awarded without the slightest discussion to the great David Oistrakh. Everyone else had to be content with crumbs; the Belgian violin school, though still a source of pride, failed, and its absence at the final was much commented on; Arthur Grumiaux and Carlo Van Neste, both young and inexperienced, were not able to convince the jury.
The success of the first Ysaÿe Competition was decisive for subsequent events. Broadcast on the radio, the competition immediately found an audience, and its blend of sporting event and artistic display at once created a following of loyal music lovers. The second competition was held in 1938, this time featuring the piano. The lessons to be drawn were identical: although Moura Lympany (then still known as Mary Johnstone) slipped in between Emil Gilels (1st) and Jacob Flier (3rd), and although the prizes overall seemed more equitably distributed (a Belgian, André Dumortier, did brilliantly, placed just after a striking Italian pianist, Arturo Benedetti-Michelangeli, ranked 7th), the Soviet school once more emerged with head held high and with a somewhat condescending eye.

It was too much. Before war broke out, thanks to the support of an enlightened and generous patron, Baron Paul de Launoit, Queen Elisabeth inaugurated a boldly conceived musical institution, formed on the Soviet model and intended to make a noticeable improvement in the training conditions of young Belgian artistes: this was the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, its good health a century later bearing witness to its effectiveness. As for the Competition, circumstances led to its suspension, for the time being. Belgian cultural life, though nonetheless intensely active during World War II, had entered an obviously difficult phase. Charles Houdret, the administrator and manager of the Queen Elisabeth Music Foundation, which gave life to the Queen’s musical projects, became embroiled in financial scandals and the foundation sank into oblivion. Times were uncomfortable and unpredictable for the Belgian royal family during the immediate post-war period: two of Queen Elisabeth’s children, Léopold III and Marie-José - an ephemeral Queen of Italy, lost their thrones. A third, Charles, held the Regency of Belgium for five years, but, though he was a princely artiste, this period was unavoidably marked by one overriding priority: the reconstruction of the country.

Nonetheless, in the spring of 1950, it was decided to relaunch the Ysaÿe Competition. Marcel Cuvelier, the founder in 1940 of the Belgian Jeunesses Musicales and, in 1945, with René Nicoly, of the International Federation of Jeunesses Musicales, convinced Queen Elisabeth to give her name to the competition. Paul de Launoit loyally brought his total support to the undertaking, of which he became president. The first qualifiers took place in the spring of 1951, in accordance with rules that had been taken over directly from the Ysaÿe Competition. What is more, from then on the prestigious buildings of the Music Chapel housed the finalists for the period of solitary study. These buildings, indeed, were very quickly to become one of the competition’s symbols, even to the point of putting their original function into the shade, at least until 1956.

The Competition, a founder member of the World Federation of International Music Competitions (1957 has been, since its foundation, considered the world over to be one of the most prestigious, but also one of the most difficult in existence. It is devoted the violin (since 1951), to the piano (since 1952), to composition (since 1953) and to singing (since 1988). In each category sessions are held every four years. But is it necessary to continue ? The history of the Competition is full of images, sounds and memories, and whereas memories can be transmitted well enough from generation to generation, images and sounds are today also available. We can, however, usefully reconsider some aspects of this retrospective glance that is so profitable for the cultural history of the country.

The Competition venues

There are three symbolic sites for the ‘Queen Elisabeth’.

The first is the Royal Brussels Music Conservatory. The Grande Salle, inaugurated in 1876, bears its name uneasily: it is in fact small, though this is one of its great qualities. This Italian-style concert hall, designed for pure music with a stage rising in tiers up to the Cavaillé-Coll organ, is a dream venue for a chamber music concert or a recital. Indeed, the Competition semi-finals are often transformed into a concert, and like the early qualifiers, they play to a full house. And yet the semi-finals were long handicapped in the eyes of true music lovers by a programme that set too great a store on technical difficulty, especially as far as the violin was concerned. A notable change took place in the 1970s, and today the semi-finals are seen as the high-point of the various stages, for many different reasons.

The second venue is the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel. This functional and elegant building was inaugurated in 1939 in Waterloo as a higher institute for music teaching, in which the pupil-residents studied the piano, the violin, the viola, the cello or composition with their chosen teacher in exceptional conditions of comfort and tranquillity. For each Queen Elisabeth Competition, the Chapel said good-bye to its pupils, and placed itself at the disposition of the Competition for the solitary confinement of the twelve finalists. This confinement, lasting one week, was to enable the candidate’s unaided assimilation of the unpublished set concerto. Warm and convivial despite the tension of the ordeal, it usually left an indelible impression on the finalists.

The third and final venue is the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. One of Queen Elisabeth’s great artistic projects, it was constructed in 1928, the work of the architect Victor Horta. Its great concert hall (2052 seats) with unsurpassed acoustics is the venue for all the finals, and, with regard to the singing category, for the semi-finals with orchestra. Seats are almost impossible to obtain for a final, for despite being broadcast live on television and radio, it is, without a doubt, "the place to be", a place where you had better be! In order to be up to date ? No: in order to be sure not to miss a musical event of which only the ‘Queen Elisabeth’ has the secret.

Weathering time


Some languages, such as French, use the same word to indicate ‘time’ and ‘weather’. And yet, precision is necessary when estimating the influence of a particular context, of the electric tension that fills the concert hall during certain sessions. A Soviet candidate who wins in the city where NATO has its headquarters (1951), a first Israeli laureate, who defeated a Soviet candidate in 1971; a laureate and future winner, Nai-Yuan Hu, who played the Elgar concerto at the very moment in 1985 when British football fans were creating, just a few minutes away, a frightful human tragedy: all this can fill the hall of the Palais des Beaux-Arts with special vibrations, which can be lost in recording.

It is the weather that can push the thermometer up to 40°C or more on stage, that can strip the jackets off an orchestra under the threat of strike action, that can make the piano ivories glisten with sweat. The television spotlights in the 70s and 80s were merciless. Belgian weather in spring - will you believe it ? - can also be merciless. Some finalists owe their failure or, less dramatically, various unimportant accidents to this heat that a record certainly cannot replicate!

Time, again, is the length of the competition. The competitors who reach the top places have immense powers of resistance: they have lived through a whole month of tension and ordeal. Some have cracked up during the final, not gaining the place their talent promised them. The word ‘exhaustion’ invariably recurs in the candidates’ recollections. But this is not all: for those who achieve the first places, the declaration of the results heralds further fatigue: the concerts of the laureates follow immediately, and include, notably, a gala performance with orchestra - the apotheosis of the session - in the presence of the Belgian royal family. After that there are the concerts that external agents hasten to organise with the leading laureates; they are many, and they go well beyond the borders of Belgium.

It cannot be denied. In the competition you have to weather time.

East and West


Although for the two Ysaÿe Competitions in 1937 and 1938, the USA kept a low profile, American participation became a reality with the first Queen Elisabeth Competition, and, in view of the stakes involved in this prestigious competition for the Soviet authorities, a veritable match was under way from 1951. Such, at any rate, it appeared to the public, who were hardly indifferent to East-West relations, and such it appeared to the press, despite the occasional weak denial.

The tone was set in 1951. Even more than before the war, the attitude of the Soviet laureates, perceived as arrogant, and the generally partisan way it was portrayed in the Belgian press were not without influence on the course of events. Leonid Kogan made a flying visit, and on his return to Moscow, he gave interviews in which he showed anything but tenderness for the Competition, the Queen, Belgium and its middle classes. Tension rose as the menace of war grew, and the Korean War created a violent shock in Belgium, the result being quite simply the absence of the Soviets in 1952. Later, and for a long time, the Soviets, with Oistrakh at their head, were nonetheless to show themselves among the most loyal supporters of the institution, Kogan even sitting in the 1971 and 1976 juries, and Queen Elisabeth was guest of honour at the first Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958, something that created not a little stir in Belgium.

The USSR-USA match at first seemed a well balanced one. To the American victors Senofski (1955) and Frager (1960), one should add Laredo (1959), who although Bolivian, was trained by the American Ivan Galamian and whose victory over Sitkovetsky created a sensation. Vladimir Ashkenazy’s win in 1956 was therefore welcome to the Russians. From 1963, however, the Soviet machine started to operate and apparently nothing could stop it. The series of Michlin, then Mogilevsky (1964), Hirshhorn (1967), Novitskaya (1968), Afanassiev (1972), Faerman (1975), Bezverkhny (1976) was broken only by the Israeli Miriam Fried (1971). The American rout was particularly crushing in the violin competitions: in 1967 and 1971 when the USA had no laureate in the finals at all.

At first, the media showed an almost exaggerated interest in the candidates from the East. Who are they ? What do they do ? What do they eat ? How many hours a day do they work ? This fascination, however, gradually faded. The Russians of the Brezhnev era no longer had such general appeal, and no longer seemed to be enjoying themselves. Flight to the West became the rule: after Ashkenazy, Berman, Markov, it was the turn of Hirshhorn, Kremer, Nodel, then of Novitskaya, Leonskaya, Afanassiev, Faerman, Egorov and others to flee their native land under the horrified gaze of Oistrakh and Gilels. For some it turned out well, but not for others. It was no longer so much a question of an international fixture but, often, more the rescuing of artistes in distress who had become almost asphyxiated behind an iron curtain. The USSR was in disarray, and, mired in a political impasse, shut off from the outside world, decided to boycott the competition. There were no official Soviet candidates from 1978 to 1987.

It was a time of uncertainty and disappointment for the Competition, which made great efforts to make the Soviet authorities change their minds. The Russians were missed, yet they were to return. The year 1989 and Vadim Repin marked the grand return of the Soviet bear. However, though the violinist was remarkable and appeared to be detached from political preoccupations, the bear was sick, and the USSR-USA match seemed destined to end once and for all in Berlin.

Violin, piano, singing


Born for and through the violin, the Ysaÿe Competition bequeathed its tradition to the Queen Elisabeth Competition. Inaugurated with the violin in 1951, the competition celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1976 (which was also the centenary of the birth of Queen Elisabeth) by changing the usual order of the sessions in its favour. And the fiftieth anniversary in 2001 will also be celebrated with the violin. Nonetheless, it was the piano that from 1952 became the other spearhead of the Competition and perhaps even - though the edge is minimal - the most popular. Although the attempt to popularise a composition competition, as will be seen, was not successful, the major national and international success of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in the violin and piano categories soon gave rise to some questions: why not broaden the concept, create new categories, in particular for the cello ?

The answer to these questions was provided by the rebirth of singing in Belgium to an unhoped for degree (largely explained by the success of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in the 1980s under Mortier’s management). Thanks to personalities such as Gerard Mortier, José Van Dam and Jules Bastin, and with the very active complicity of the Competition President, Count Jean-Pierre de Launoit, himself a keen opera buff, a singing competition was experimentally set up in 1988.

Since the public and critical reception was on the whole enthusiastic, the competition was repeated. Its success - and its level - never ceased from then on to grow. Following the traditionally demanding nature of the rules, the application of which can stir up some passionate discussions (are there singers who can excel all round in a lied by Wolf, an atonal set piece, a bravura scene by Donizetti and a Handel aria ?), the singing competition found its bearings, and its establishment as one of the great competitions in this domain is today beyond doubt.

Set Works and the Composition Competition


The Queen Elisabeth Competition made it a point of honour, from its foundation, of integrating itself into the world of contemporary music, and the obligatory unpublished concerto in the final was a great step in this direction. However, in the post-war atmosphere of refound optimism it did not appear sufficient. Whereas the Queen Elisabeth Music Foundation had before the war planned a broadening out of the Ysaÿe Competition to include conducting (an idea still-born because of the imminence of war), the new Competition management, from 1950, envisaged a great composition competition. Hopes were high, in 1953, for the first year. Yet a prestigious jury (Nadia Boulanger, Malipiero, Frank Martin, Martinu, Panufnik, Absil, Poot and others), performances of the scores by an excellent orchestra, the unconditional support of Queen Elisabeth, were of no avail: the competition could not find an audience. With change after change, the subsequent years (1957, 1961, 1965 and 1969) reflected the insurmountable difficulties of organising a public composition competition. Ultimate modifications, then total abandonment led, in 1991, to a formula no doubt far removed from the original idea, but undoubtedly more realistic: the Composition Competition is now biennial, and is intended to reward the set concerto for the violin and piano sessions. Open to candidates from all over the world, it has met with very honourable success in this format, and has ensured the winning composer an excellent international diffusion of his work.

For a while the set concertos were reserved for Belgian composers - with one notable exception. From 1951 to 1956 a national competition was held, but from 1959 to 1989 (with the exception of 1987, when the restriction to Belgian composers was once more imposed), the works were commissioned. The twenty or so Belgian concertos have been much talked about: too modern, not modern enough, too difficult, not difficult enough, and so on. What has not been said about these concertos! They tried at any rate, most of them possessing undeniable qualities, to be both the faithful reflection of the composer’s style and a vehicle for showing off the various talents of a performer. In listening to them again today, at a time when æsthetic dictates are no doubt less forceful, one hankers to release most of them from their purgatory, and so a significant selection is included in the fiftieth anniversary releases.

Orchestras

The orchestral accompaniment has formed part of the final ever since the first Ysaÿe Competition. At the time, the recently formed Grand Orchestre Symphonique de l'INR (National Radiodiffusion Institute) had fulfilled its mission gloriously under the baton of its conductor and founder Franz André. A talented violinist, a pupil of Weingartner, and deliberately tyrannical, André had truly imposed himself as a conductor of great stature, giving a large number of premieres of works by Stravinsky, Milhaud and the finest Belgian composers. He it was who in 1951 became the conductor of the ‘Queen Elisabeth’, though this time at the head of the Orchestre National.

Born officially in 1936, the Orchestre National de Belgique had flourished considerably. Up to the war it had benefited from the regular collaboration of Erich Kleiber and it reached its apogee in about 1960, when its musical director was none other than André Cluytens. However, the availability required of a conductor for the ‘Queen Elisabeth’ is great, and Cluytens only appeared sporadically in the course of the competition. Franz André was therefore the sole embodiment of the ‘Competition orchestra’ from 1951 to 1964. His vast experience, his familiarity with contemporary musical languages, his smoothness as an accompanist worked wonders, and his composure brought him the eternal gratitude - or ingratitude - of a few candidates recuperated after a memory loss, a broken string or a ‘stuck page’. A member of the jury in 1967, Franz André was no longer on the podium, having left his place to René Defossez. A page had been turned.

The progressively community-based nature of Belgian culture left its mark in the choices that were made in those days. The Orchestre de la Radio Télévision Belge (RTB/BRT) was the successor of the Orchestre National, at times having a Flemish conductor (Daniel Sternefeld, 1968), at times a Walloon (René Defossez, 1971). Whereas the Orchestre National reappeared in 1972 under the direction of Defossez, it was the radio-television orchestras, now split up (RTB and BRT), which were destined to accompany future sessions. Yet the participation of the Orchestre de la BRT in 1975, conducted by Irwin Hoffman, was short-lived. The Orchestre National returned in 1976 with the conductor Georges Octors, also an excellent violinist and whose qualities as an accompanist were highly appreciated. The great days of the National appeared by then, however, to be over. No-one was surprised when, in 1993, the decision was taken to turn to the symphony orchestras of Liège and Antwerp, by now raised, thanks to the support of the Flemish and Walloon communities, to an international level: the Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège (whose artistic director, Pierre Bartholomée, conducted the 1995 session) and the Orchestre Royal Philharmonique de Flandre. From 1999, however, the fully reconstituted Orchestre National de Belgique once more became a regular partner for the violin and piano sessions.

The singing sessions found an ideal partner right from the start (1988) in the Orchestre Symphonique de la Monnaie. Under the direction of Sylvain Cambreling (1988) then of Marc Soustrot (1992, 1996 and 2000), the latter also conducting the 1997 violin session and the 1999 piano session, this orchestra of the Brussels opera house was able, in a particularly delicate operation, to provide the requisite qualities for showing the candidates at their best. For the baroque repertory, the necessity of adequate accompaniment was soon felt, Belgium being one of the historical centres of the baroque revival. Having, in 1992 and 1996, opted for a group using modern instruments (Patrick Peire’s Collegium Instrumentale Brugense), the Competition management took the long awaited step of choosing an ensemble that used early instruments: the Academy of Ancient Music under the direction of Paul Goodwin accompanied the 2000 singing session, not without creating a sensation.
The quest for ideal accompaniment was unceasing: for the fiftieth anniversary session in 2001, featuring the violin, the semi-finals will permit the candidates to perform a Mozart concerto with a chamber orchestra. The accompanists available for the violin and singing candidates who do not have their own pianist are of an excellent level. Indeed some of them are former laureates of the Competition, such as Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden or Daniel Blumenthal.

The Juries


The juries of the Queen Elisabeth Competition are in themselves legendary. Perfectly silent, these "killers" - as Isaac Stern mischievously called them - are the eyes and ears before which the laureates try to forget their nerves; they are the penholders who write notes that are secret and that cannot be changed; they are the masters who have designated 31 First Prize winners from 1951 to 2000, regardless of whether their judgement has been confirmed by posterity or not.

The prestige of these juries is undeniable. How could an expert connoisseur of violin history not swoon on reading the list of the jury members in, for example, 1971: Avramov, Bobesco, Calvet, Francescatti, Gulli, Kogan, Kurtz, Menuhin, Neaman, Octors, Odnopossoff, Raskin, Stern, Szigeti, Uminska, Vegh ? There are many such examples, but this is no place for lists. There is one unquestionable certainty: the capacity for judgement of such a jury is manifestly immense. The questions raised by the prize lists are therefore all the more fascinating. Listening to the Competition archives, there is obviously a considerable temptation to make a late appeal against a historical verdict. Goodness! How could these great masters in 1952 have classified Entremont 10th and Hans Graf 11th ? Why was Vasary only 6th in 1956 ? Did Zakhar Bron, the teacher of Repin and Vengerov, deserve to be only 12th in 1971? Was it right to place Egorov 3rd in 1975, behind two compatriots who are today hardly heard at all ?

A jury always has its reasons. The number of the members, the absence of discussion are solid guarantees. And the jury judges what it hears in the final, though coloured by the memory of the first round and of the semi-finals (these latter becoming more and more important). To be true, Emmanuel Ax, James Tocco, Cyprien Katsaris (7th, 8th and 9th in 1972) were already great artistes. Yet some aspects of their performances that evening - be it on an artistic or technical level - were less convincing for the likes of Annie Fischer, Alexandre Braïlowsky, Leon Fleisher, Emil Gilels and Vlado Perlemuter who listened to them most attentively. This is the unbending law of the Competition. Subsequently, as their careers develop, the cards are reshuffled, and, with the help of Lady Luck, revenge - always of a pacific nature - is frequent.

It should be added that the Competition management could not, with understandable greediness, resist the pleasure of getting some of the jury members to contribute to the sessions during the week of solitary study. Memorable concerts have been held, such as the evening in 1959 that brought together Oistrakh, Menuhin and Grumiaux conducted by Franz André. Indeed, an Oistrakh, a Gilels or a Frager multiply their appearances at such a period for the greater pleasure of their admirers. Today, the accent is rather on help for the candidates in the form of master-classes given by members of the jury during the week of ‘confinement’. They are open in particular to the unlucky semi-finalists.

Jury presidents


Primus inter pares, the jury president has an important role. He is the go-between for the prestigious judges and the crowd, publicly thanking the royal family for its presence, the orchestra for its dedication throughout the six consecutive evenings, and announcing, in an indescribably electric atmosphere, the final result in the course of Saturday night. This role was first filled by a great organiser, Marcel Cuvelier, director of the Competition and incidentally also director of the Société Philharmonique de Bruxelles. After his death, however, and quite logically, it was henceforth to be Belgian musicians of the first flight who took over the role, starting with two directors of the Royal Brussels Conservatory: Léon Jongen and Marcel Poot.

Though Léon Jongen’s reign was short - he was 76 when he succeeded Cuvelier in 1960, that of Poot was long. Up until 1980, this arch and elegant man of short stature, his nose invariably surmounted by thick round 1930s-style spectacles, a cigarette glued to his lips, and endowed with a famously dry sense of humour, officiated with authority and competence. Thereafter it was the turn of Eugène Traey, a first-rate pianist, pupil of Casadesus, Leimer and Gieseking, the partner of Grumiaux, and a well-known teacher. Most recently, since 1996, the current director of the Royal Flemish Brussels Conservatory, Arie Van Lysebeth, has taken up the torch with the elegance and the competence for which he is well-known to all.

Médias

Honour where honour is due: without the radio, this box-set could not have come into existence in its present form. The Institut National de Radiodiffusion belge (INR/NIR), set up in an ultramodern building in 1938, was considered one of the most effective of its day for contemporary music. Fired by such strong personalities as Paul Collaer and Franz André, the live broadcasting of concerts had at first considerably restricted the diffusion of the ‘78’ records that less well supported institutions had to be content with. Quite naturally the Ysaÿe Competition was broadcast live in 1937. Quite naturally also the Queen Elisabeth Competition was broadcast from 1951, the radio broadcasting the finals in toto and carefully recording them for future broadcasts. From 1955, the interval remarks were entrusted to a specialist, the composer and music critic Jacques Stehman (his memory is kept alive today by a prize awarded by the listeners of the RTBF), who surrounded himself with journalists in order to turn the Competition into a popular radio event, soon to be relayed by the European Broadcasting Union. Flemish radio followed suit and also started to broadcast the Competition, with appropriate commentary, for the Dutch-speaking part of the country, also establishing a prize awarded by its listeners, the Sternefeld Prize.

This opening out to the media received a new impetus thanks to television. From 1959, it indicated its interest in the Competition. Technical limitations, however, and also mistrust for the new medium got things off to a slow start. First, the more public aspects, such as the awarding of the prizes by Queen Elisabeth, were filmed at the expense of the musical side. It is true that the listener was king: the audience in the Palais des Beaux-Arts could not tolerate, any more than the Competition management, the cumbersome set-up and harsh lighting necessitated by the cameras of those days. From 1964 however, television filmed the rehearsals in the Palais des Beaux-Arts as an item for the evening news programme. A fixed camera from 1967 enabled select moments of the semi-finals and the final to be immortalised. Live broadcasting started in 1975 with partial coverage, which became total in 1978. This has continued without a break on the Walloon channel, whereas Flemish television has since 1997 replaced this with reports and deferred broadcasting, something regretted by thousands of Flemish music lovers.

Such media coverage, to which should be added the sustained interest of the written press, both Flemish and French-speaking, is unique. It has given laureates impressive public profiles and has led some of them to settle in Belgium.

To this range of features was at last added phonographic recording, the preferred medium for musical emotion for most music lovers. In 1967, the Discothèque Nationale founded in 1956 with the support of Queen Elisabeth, issued, as a homage to the deceased monarch, a record which included a history of the Competition, together with the performances of the first three laureates. The Belgian subsidiary of Deutsche Grammophon from then on issued, after each session, a series of records produced with the greatest care. However local subsidiaries of major recording companies were soon to end their own classical music productions. In 1983, an independent Belgian producer - René Gailly - took over. Since 1996, the Cyprès label has recorded, produced and distributed all the records of the Queen Elisabeth Competition.

In 2051 somebody will perhaps undertake to celebrate the Competition’s centenary. May that person be able to write: a second half-century of emotion. It starts today!

Michel Stockhem
Translated by Jeremy Drake