| Introduction
What makes a competition in musical
performance great? This is the question when faced with their
proliferation over the past fifty years. Just over half a
century ago, the Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition had its
first, historic, session, dominated by Leon Fleisher. Since
then, memories of an Ashkenazy, a Frager, an Afanassiev, an
El Bacha, a Braley, have been fused with the present. What
about the uniformisation of talent, the internationalisation
of schools, the scientific preparation of ‘competition
machines’? The 2003 Competition has proved that these
worries were exaggerated. The maturity of the Far Eastern
countries now being an established fact, the geographic spread
of the competition has been enlarged, and the approach to
the works, the aural culture, the individual itineraries,
the maturity or otherwise of the contestants, all play an
equal role: an extraordinarily broad spectrum indeed, and
what a pleasure to report it!
The jury, an assembly unique in both prestige and diversity,
encountered 24 personalities in the semifinals, of whom the
least that can be said is that many deserved further hearing.
Only twelve finalists had this honour, being obliged, within
a week, and in a sequestered study-room, to master the previously
unreleased score of a distinguished composer: this is one
of the laws of the ‘Elisabethan tradition’. The
dreams of the Australian composer Ian
Munro charmed and moved the audience of the Palais des
Beaux-Arts in Brussels, which was able to follow - like tens
of thousands of television viewers - the competitors’
performances accompanied by the National
Orchestra of Belgium under the fluid and attentive direction
of Gilbert Varga. Yet
the favourite moment for aficionados probably remains the
semifinals, at the Royal Brussels Conservatory. The intimacy
of the recitals was coupled this year with an at times cruel
confrontation with the concertos of Mozart, devotedly accompanied
by Georges Octors and
the Royal Chamber Orchestra
of Wallonia.
From all this was to emerge Severin
von Eckardstein. Maturity, stylistic plenitude and fullness
of sound were combined in him with an indefinable air of culture,
exempt of arrogance and show, resulting in performances that
were anything but adventitious. We shall be listening again
and again to what this young man was able to do under the
very difficult conditions, as regards both length and intensity,
of the toughest of international competitions. We can but
be convinced that the discovery of a true Beethovenian, able
to master both a contemporary score and to give such a performance
of the Prokofiev Second, is unquestionably to be assigned
to the Competition’s credit. Such talent was no doubt
needed in order to relegate to second place a young, staggeringly
gifted Chinese lad, Wen-Yu Shen
- sixteen years old! - ahead of a cohort of laureates, several
of whom impressed the public. We shall have the pleasure of
meeting them again once the extraordinary bustle of the ‘Queen
Elisabeth’ has died down.
Michel Stockhem
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