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The origins of the Queen Elisabeth College of Music are linked to two strong
personalities: Queen Elisabeth, a violinist keen to help young talentst, and
Eugène Isaÿe, one of the greatest violinists and composers of his time. They
wanted to support young talent through a highly specialised school and an
international competition. The competition has been known since the outset and
was to become the Queen Elisabeth Competition. The College of Music was
inaugurated on 12 July 1939. It is known for teaching exceptional young talented
musicians. On that occasion, the famous critic of the age, Emile Vuillermoz,
described the College of Music as a sort of modern Villa Medici. After the war,
from 1956 until June 2004, it developed cycles of 3 years for a maximum of 12
students.
A reflection on the future of the artistic project of the
College was initiated in 2001: 3 years of reflection with important
personalities from the music world led to a new College on 7 October 2004 with
opening, flexibility and the search for excellence through high quality
individualised education as the main objectives.
For the past four years, the
College of Music has been consolidating its mission of providing excellent,
individualised musical education of an international level.
The educationall
structure, established around the four masters in residence (Augustin Dumay,
Abdel Rahman El Bacha, José Van Dam, the Artemis Quartet), has opened up to new
teachers (Sybille Wilson, Daniel Ottevaere, Paola Larini) working in close
cooperation with the initial education team.
An analysis of the age brackets,
nationalities and level of the young musicians attests to the high quality of
the recruitment and a stimulating expansion of the international
dimension.
Finally, as in 2005 with Yossif Ivanov for the violin, 2007
stood out with a magnificent 2nd prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition 2007
for the Bulgarian pianist, Plamena Mangova, a student at the College since 2004.
2008 has consecrated two singers in residence, Tatiana Trenogina and Gabrielle
Philiponet among the 12 finalists of the Queen Elisabeth Competition and the
Dali Trio, in residence in the College since 2006, won the chamber music
competition of Osaka.
This educational work is closely connected to
another essential and complementary activity at the College of Music: the
organisation of concerts and events that afford students an opportunity to
perform before an audience and the press and, for the most advanced among them,
to play with an orchestra. Indispensable experiences to help them master their
art and technique at the highest level.
In addition to the concerts held
at the Palais des Beaux Arts [Centre for Fine Arts] (on Sunday, at the Mont des
Arts) and at Flagey ('Un midi pas comme les autres' [A noontime not like the
others]) and the Opera Studio productions, in cooperation with the Monnaie,
several important projects are being pursued at this time with other cultural
institutions, including the MIM concerts as of February 2008, and a new
production in cooperation with the Lyon Opera and the Academy of the Aix en
Provence Festival.
The College of Music also cooperates with summer
festivals in Belgium and in France: Wallonia, Vexin, Montpellier, Menton,
Verbier, Aix en Provence etc. It also developed a series of partnerships with
foreign orchestras such the London Chamber Orchestra, the Metropolitana
Orquestra de Lisboa and the National Orchestra of Lille. The College of Music
organises about one hundred concerts and events per year.
In the same
line and as a follow-up to these concerts, the College of Music produces a
series of CDs, in cooperation with the Fuga Libera label. This series offers a
certain number of students an opportunity to record what will probably be their
first CD under optimal conditions. The initiative has been crowned with a
Diapason d'or [gold award] being conferred on Plamena Mangova for works by
Shostakovitch. A second CD, devoted to works by Schumann by Milos Popovic, a
young Belgo-Serbian pianist, released last October, has already been hailed by
the press. A 3rd CD has been recorded in August 2008 at Flagey with the Dali
Trio in a Ravel programme.
The College of Music, after 4 years of
renovation of its artistic training, extends its means and reinforces its
structure on the juridical and financial level with the merger, on April 15th,
of the Queen Elisabeth College of Music and the Queen Elisabeth Music
Foundation. The six initiating partners of the Foundation founded in 2004, the
Palais des Beaux-Arts, La Monnaie, thePhilharmonic Society, the Queen Elisabeth
Competition, the former Euphonia Foundation and the Queen Elisabeth College of
Music are to-day intimately linked to the future of the Collegeof
Music.
The next challenge targets the development of our facilities: the
construction of new housing and additional rehearsal rooms, for which support
from our private and public partners is of paramount important.
Bernard
de Launoit, Executive President |
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