75 Years Ysaÿe & Queen Elisabeth Competition
In 2011 the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition released a 4-CD box set, with a booklet of commentary, devoted to 75 years of its violin competition. The great laureates of 75 years of the Ysaÿe and Queen Elisabeth Competition have now been immortalised in 75 Years Ysaÿe & Queen Elisabeth, a new 5-CD box set that contains almost 400 minutes of virtuoso piano performances – of the concertos that made their names and helped them to become legendary figures.
CD | 75 Years Ysaÿe & Queen Elisabeth Competition ●●●●
Classical Music (cd-elisabeth.be)
The accompanying booklet gives a brief summary of the high points of the competition and recreates the atmosphere of key historic moments by reproducing some charming black-and-white photographs of easily recognisable youngsters from Andrei Nikolsky to Wolfgang Manz. Laureates such as Leon Fleisher, Pierre-Alain Volondat, and Anna Vinnitskaya have contributed some moving recollections that look back fondly at the days of the competition that was to shape the rest of their lives. “I worked so hard that I can still recall the muscular aches in my hands, my wrists, and my arms,” admits the French pianist Cécile Ousset, who was fourth laureate in 1956. The CDs present a selection of legendary concertos with which first and second prizes were won, from Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto as played by Valery Afanassiev (in 1972) and Rachmaninov’s second and third concertos to the first and second concertos of Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, and Prokofiev and Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto in an enchanting performance by Frank Braley (in 1991). Each concerto is accompanied by either the National Orchestra of Belgium or the Royal Flemish Philharmonic (deFilharmonie).
In its early decades, the Queen Elisabeth Competition found itself, willy-nilly, in the position of being an arena in the ongoing conflict between the Soviet Union and the USA – which seems to have done no harm at all to the quality of the music, to judge by the live recordings. The years of the Cold War saw some stunning virtuoso performances, including those of Vladimir Ashkenazy (1956) and Valery Afanassiev (1972) from the Soviet Union and Leon Fleisher (1952), Malcolm Frager (1960), and Jeffrey Swann (1972) under the colours of the USA.
Classical Music (cd-elisabeth.be)
The accompanying booklet gives a brief summary of the high points of the competition and recreates the atmosphere of key historic moments by reproducing some charming black-and-white photographs of easily recognisable youngsters from Andrei Nikolsky to Wolfgang Manz. Laureates such as Leon Fleisher, Pierre-Alain Volondat, and Anna Vinnitskaya have contributed some moving recollections that look back fondly at the days of the competition that was to shape the rest of their lives. “I worked so hard that I can still recall the muscular aches in my hands, my wrists, and my arms,” admits the French pianist Cécile Ousset, who was fourth laureate in 1956. The CDs present a selection of legendary concertos with which first and second prizes were won, from Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto as played by Valery Afanassiev (in 1972) and Rachmaninov’s second and third concertos to the first and second concertos of Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, and Prokofiev and Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto in an enchanting performance by Frank Braley (in 1991). Each concerto is accompanied by either the National Orchestra of Belgium or the Royal Flemish Philharmonic (deFilharmonie).
In its early decades, the Queen Elisabeth Competition found itself, willy-nilly, in the position of being an arena in the ongoing conflict between the Soviet Union and the USA – which seems to have done no harm at all to the quality of the music, to judge by the live recordings. The years of the Cold War saw some stunning virtuoso performances, including those of Vladimir Ashkenazy (1956) and Valery Afanassiev (1972) from the Soviet Union and Leon Fleisher (1952), Malcolm Frager (1960), and Jeffrey Swann (1972) under the colours of the USA.
Read more about: Cultuurnieuws , Muziek
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