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The Queen Elisabeth Competition (Dutch: Koningin Elisabethwedstrijd, French: Concours musical international Reine Élisabeth) is an international competition for career-starting musicians held in Brussels. The competition is named after Queen Elisabeth of Belgium (1876–1965). It is a competition for classical violinists (since 1937), pianists (since 1938), singers (1988 to present) and cellists (since 2017).^[1] It also used to hold international competitions for composers from 1953 to 2012.^[2] The Patron is Queen Mathilde of Belgium.

Since its foundation it has been considered one of the most challenging and prestigious competitions for instrumentalists. In 1957 the Queen Elisabeth Competition was one of the founding members of the World Federation of International Music Competitions.^[3]

History

Eugène Ysaÿe, Belgian concert violinist, wanted to set up an international music competition for young virtuosi showcasing their all-round skill, but died before he could do so. Queen Elisabeth, patroness of the arts and good friend of Ysaÿe, set up the competition in his memory in 1937. The prestige of Ysaÿe and Belgium's Royal Court (King Albert and Queen Elisabeth were admired heroes of the First World War) assured that the first competition would draw great entrants.^[4]

1937–1950

The first two editions of the competition, in 1937 for violin and in 1938 for piano, were named after Ysaÿe. World War II and other impediments prevented the competition from taking place from 1940 to 1950.^[4]

	1937	1938
Violin	X
Piano		X

1951–1986

In 1951, the competition was renamed for its patroness, Queen Elisabeth, and has taken place under that name since then. It is one of three musical institutions (the others being the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel and Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, residence orchestra of the Queen Elisabeth Hall) dedicated to the former Queen.

Entrants are expected to learn a compulsory work written especially for the competition. (The work is picked during the composition competition.) Usually there is also a section where contestants are expected to perform a work by a Belgian composer. From 1963 to 1980, Marcel Poot of the Brussels Conservatory chaired the jury of the competition and wrote several commissioned works to mark the occasion, that were used as competition-required pieces.^[5]

The competition restarted with four-year cycles, starting with two consecutive years for violin and piano respectively, followed by a year for international composition competitions. The fourth year of each cycle had no competition. The years 1973 to 1974 were a transition to cycles with instrument competitions in even years, and the internationional composition competition in the year between the violin and the piano competitions, until the early 1980s when the cycles were re-arranged again.^[2]

Year	Violin	Piano	Composition
1951	X		For Belgian composers
1952		X	For Belgian composers
1953			International
1955	X		For Belgian composers
1956		X	For Belgian composers
1957			International
1959	X		For Belgian composers
1960		X	For Belgian composers
1961			International
1963	X		For Belgian composers
1964		X	For Belgian composers
1965			International
1967	X		For Belgian composers
1968		X	For Belgian composers
1969			International
1971	X		For Belgian composers
1972		X	For Belgian composers
1975		X	For Belgian composers
1976	X		For Belgian composers
1977			International
1978		X	For Belgian composers
1980	X		For Belgian composers
1982			International
1983		X	For Belgian composers
1985	X		For Belgian composers

1987–2006

With the competition for voice (singing) introduced in 1988 the four-year cycles were piano → voice → violin → year without performer competition. Before 2002 there were no composition competitions in even years.^[2]

	1987	1988	1989	1991	1992	1993	1995	1996
Piano	X			X			X
Voice/singing		X			X			X
Violin			X			X
Composition				X		X	X
Composition for Belgian composers	X		X	X		X	X

	1997	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006
Piano		X				X
Voice/singing			X				X
Violin	X			X				X
Composition	X	X		X	X		X		X
Composition for Belgian composers	X	X		X		X		X

2007–2014

From 2007 there were no longer years without competition for performers: with three disciplines (piano, voice, violin), each of these returned in a three-year cycle.^[2]

There were competitions for composition in 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012, each of these for the performance piece of the instrumentalist finale of the next year.^[2]

	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Piano	X			X			X
Voice		X			X			X
Violin			X			X
Composition		X	X		X	X

2015 and beyond

From 2015 there are again four-year cycles, with, for the first time in 2017, a cello competition added after the year with the piano competition.^[6] The public composition competitions stopped.^[2] The 2020 competition was postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.^[7]

	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2021	2022	2023	2024
Violin	X				X				X
Piano		X				X
Cello			X				X
Voice				X				X

Patronage and prizes

The Queen Elisabeth Competition generates income from its own activities, from private patronage and from sponsoring. Resources are varied: part of the funding for the prizes laureates receive is provided by public authorities and patrons, corporate sponsors, donors contributions, ticket and programme sales, advertising in the programmes and the sale of recordings. The Competition also benefits from the volunteer assistance of families who open their homes to candidates for the duration of the competition.

Prizes for the laureates of the competition (amounts as awarded in the 2015 violin competition):^[8]

First prize, International Queen Elisabeth Grand Prize – Prize of the patron Queen (as of 2015: Queen Mathilde Prize): 25,000 euro, numerous concerts, recording on CD; for the violin competition also: loan of the 'Huggins' Stradivarius violin from the Nippon Music Foundation until the next violin competition.
Second Prize, Belgian Federal Government Prize: 20,000 euro, concerts, recording on CD
Third Prize, Count de Launoit Prize: 17,000 euro, concerts
Fourth Prize, Prize awarded alternately by each of the communities of Belgium (2015: awarded by the Government of the Federation Wallonia-Brussels): 12,500 euro, concerts
Fifth Prize, Brussels Capital Region Prize: 10,000 euro, concerts
Sixth Prize, City of Brussels Prize: 8,000 euro, concerts
For the other six laureates, sums donated by the Belgian National Lottery: 4,000 euro each

Laureates

Competitions for performing musicians have 12 finalists performing as a soloist before a full symphonic orchestra. Originally and until 1993, all finalists became ranked laureates, later only the first six laureates were ranked. The first editions of the competition were dominated by candidates from the USSR: the 1937 violin competition was won by David Oistrakh and the next year Emil Gilels won the piano competition. The piano competition of 1952 and the violin competition of 1955 were the first to see winners from the United States. By the time of the 50th competition in 2012, an increasing number of Asian contestants reached the finals.^[2]

Source.^[9]

Violin

Year	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th
1937	David Oistrakh	Ricardo Odnoposoff	Elizabeth Gilels	Boris Goldstein	Marina Kozolupova	Mikhail Fichtengolz
1951	Leonid Kogan	Mikhail Vayman	Elise Cserfalvi	Theo Olof	Alexei Gorokhov^[10]	Hedi Gigler
1955	Berl Senofsky	Julian Sitkovetsky	Pierre Doukan	Francine Dorfeuille-Boussinot	Victor Pikayzen	Alberto Lysy
1959	Jaime Laredo	Albert Markov	Joseph Silverstein	Vladimir Malinin	Boris Kouniev	Georgui Mintchev Badev
1963	Aleksey Mikhlin [ru]	Semyon Snitkovsky	Arnold Steinhardt	Zarius Shikhmurzayeva	Charles Castleman	Masuko Ushioda
1967	Philippe Hirschhorn	Stoïka Milanova	Gidon Kremer	Roman Nodel	Hidetaro Suzuki	Jean-Jacques Kantorow
1971	Miriam Fried	Andrey Korsakov	Hamao Fujiwara	Ana Chumachenco	Edith Volckaert	Joshua Epstein
1976	Mikhaïl Bezverkhny	Irina Medvedeva	Dong-Suk Kang	Grigori Zhislin	Shizuka Ishikawa
1980	Yuzuko Horigome [jp]	Peter Zazofsky	Takashi Shimizu	Ruriko Tsukahara	Mihaela Martin
1985	Hu Nai-yuan	Ik-hwan Bae	Henry Raudales	Hu Kun	Mi Kyung Lee
1989	Vadim Repin	Akiko Suwanai	Evgeny Bushkov	Erez Ofer	Ulrike-Anima Mathé
1993	Yayoi Toda	Liviu Prunaru	Keng-Yuen Tseng [zh]	Martin Beaver	Natalia Prischepenko
1997	Nikolaj Znaider	Albrecht Breuninger	Kristóf Baráti	Andrew Haveron	Natsumi Tamai
2001	Baiba Skride	Kam Ning	Barnabás Kelemen	Alina Pogostkin	Ning Feng
2005	Sergey Khachatryan	Yossif Ivanov [fr]	Sophia Jaffé	Saeka Matsuyama	Mikhail Ovrutsky
2009	Ray Chen	Lorenzo Gatto	Ilian Gârnet	Suyoen Kim	Nikita Borisoglebsky
2012	Andrey Baranov	Tatsuki Narita	Hyun Su Shin	Esther Yoo	Tseng Yu-Chien
2015^[8]	Lim Ji-young	Oleksii Semenenko	William Hagen	Tobias Feldmann	Stephen Waarts
2019	Stella Chen	Timothy Chooi	Stephen Kim	Shannon Lee	Júlia Pusker
2024	Dmytro Udovychenko	Joshua Brown	Elli Choi	Kevin Zhu	Julian Rhee	Minami Yoshida

Piano

Year	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th
1938	Emil Gilels	Mary Johnstone (Moura Lympany)	Jakov Flier	Lance Dossor	Nibya Mariño Bellini [es]
1952	Leon Fleisher	Karl Engel	Maria Tipo	Frans Brouw	Laurence Davis
1956	Vladimir Ashkenazy	John Browning	Andrzej Czajkowski	Cécile Ousset	Lazar Berman
1960	Malcolm Frager	Ronald Turini	Lee Luvisi	Alice Mitchenko	Gábor Gabos
1964	Evgeny Mogilevsky	Nikolai Petrov	Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden	Anton Kuerti	Richard Syracuse
1968	Ekaterina Novitskaya	Valère Kamychov	Jeffrey Siegel	Semion Kroutchine	André De Groote [nl]
1972	Valery Afanassiev	Jeffrey Swann	Joseph Alfidi	David Lively	Svetlana Navasardyan
1975	Mikhaïl Faerman	Stanislav Igolinsky	Youri Egorov	Larry Michael Graham	Sergueï Iuchkevitch
1978	Abdel Rahman El Bacha	Gregory Allen	Brigitte Engerer	Alan Weiss	Douglas Finch
1983	Pierre-Alain Volondat [fr]	Wolfgang Manz	Boyan Vodenitcharov	Daniel Blumenthal	Eliane Rodrigues
1987	Andrei Nikolsky	Akira Wakabayashi	Rolf Plagge	Johan Schmidt	Ikuyo Nakamichi
1991	Frank Braley	Stephen Prutsman	Brian Ganz	Hae-sun Paik	Alexander Melnikov
1995	Markus Groh [fr]	Laura Mikkola	Giovanni Bellucci	Yuliya Gorenman	Jong Hwa Park
1999	Vitaly Samoshko	Alexander Ghindin	Ning An	Shai Wosner	Roberto Cominati [it]
2003	Severin von Eckardstein	Wen-Yu Shen	Unawarded after Dong-Hyek Lim refused it^[11]	Roberto Giordano	Kazumasa Matsumoto
2007	Anna Vinnitskaya	Plamena Mangova	Francesco Piemontesi	Ilya Rashkovsky	Lim Hyo-Sun
2010	Denis Kozhukhin	Evgeni Bozhanov	Hannes Minnaar	Yury Favorin	Kim Tae-Hyung
2013	Boris Giltburg	Rémi Geniet	Mateusz Borowiak	Stanislav Khristenko	Zhang Zuo
2016	Lukáš Vondráček	Henry Kramer	Alexander Beyer	Chi-Ho Han	Aljoša Jurinić	Alberto Ferro
2021	Jonathan Fournel [fr]	Sergei Redkin	Keigo Mukawa	Tomoki Sakata	Vitaly Starikov

Voice / Singing

Year	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th
1988	Aga Wińska [Wikidata]	Jeanette Thompson	Huub Claessens [Wikidata]	Jacob Will	Yvonne Schiffelers [Wikidata]
1992	Thierry Félix [Wikidata]	Reginaldo Pinheiro	Wendy Hoffman	Regina Nathan	Cristina Gallardo-Domâs
1996	Stephen Salters [Wikidata]	Ana Camelia Ștefănescu [Wikidata]	Eleni Matos	Mariana Zvetkova [Wikidata]	Ray Wade
2000	Marie-Nicole Lemieux	Marius Brenciu	Olga Pasichnyk	Pierre-Yves Pruvot	Lubana Al Quntar [Wikidata]
2004	Iwona Sobotka	Hélène Guilmette [fr]	Shadi Torbey [fr]	Teodora Gheorghiu	Diana Axentii [fr]
2008	Szabolcs Brickner [Wikidata]	Isabelle Druet	Bernadetta Grabias [Wikidata]	Anna Kasyan	Yury Haradzetski
2011	Haeran Hong [Wikidata]	Thomas Blondelle [nl]	Elena Galitskaya [Wikidata]	Anaïk Morel [Wikidata]	Konstantin Shushakov [Wikidata]
2014	Sumi Hwang	Jodie Devos	Sarah Laulan [Wikidata]	Yu Shao	Hera Hyesang Park
2018	Samuel Hasselhorn [fr]	Eva Zaïcik [fr]	Ao Li	Rocío Pérez	Héloïse Mas [fr]
2023	Taehan Kim	Jasmin White	Julia Muzychenko-Greenhalgh	Floriane Hasler	Inho Jeong

Cello

Year	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th
2017^[12]	Victor Julien-Laferrière	Yuya Okamoto	Santiago Cañón [es]	Aurélien Pascal	Ivan Karizna
2022^[13]	Choi Ha-young^[14]^[15]	Chen Yibai	Marcel Johannes Kits	Oleksiy Shadrin	Petar Pejcic

Composition

The first international Queen Elisabeth Competition for composition was held in 1953. Composition competitions had less laureates or finalists, with usually only the winners who see their winning piece performed in the final of the competitions for instrumentalists receiving broad media attention.^[16]

Year	Category	1st	Work
1953	Composition for symphony orchestra	Michał Spisak	Serenade
1957	Composition for symphony orchestra	Orazio Fiume [it]	Concerto per orchestra
1957	Composition for chamber orchestra	Michał Spisak	Concerto giocoso
1961	Composition for symphony orchestra	Albert Delvaux [da; fr; ru]	Sinfonia burlesca
1961	Composition for chamber orchestra	Giorgio Cambissa [fr]	Concerto per ochestra da camera n. 3
1965	Composition for symphony orchestra	Rudolf Brucci	Synfonia lesta
1965	Composition for violin and orchestra	Wilhelm Georg Berger	Concert
1969	Composition for symphony orchestra	Nicolae Beloiu [fr]	Symphonie en deux mouvements
1969	Composition for piano and orchestra	Ray E. Luke [nl]	Concerto for piano
1977	Composition for symphony orchestra	Hiro Fujikake	Rope Crest
1977	Composition for string quartet	Akira Nishimura	Heterophony
1982	Composition for symphony orchestra	John Weeks [fr]	Five Litanies for Orchestra
1991	Composition	Tristan-Patrice Challulau	Ne la città dolente
1993	Composition	Piet Swerts [nl]	Zodiac
1995	Composition	John Weeks	Requiescat
1997	Composition	Hendrik Hofmeyr	Raptus
1999	Composition	Uljas Pulkkis [fr]	Tears of Ludovico
2001	Composition	Søren Nils Eichberg	Qilaatersorneq
2002	Composition	Ian Munro	Piano Concerto Dreams
2004	Composition	Javier Torres Maldonado	Obscuro Etiamtum Lumine
2006	Composition	Miguel Gálvez-Taroncher	La luna y la muerte
2008	Composition	Cho Eun-hwa [de; nl; ru]	Agens
2009	Composition	Jeon Minje [fr]	Target
2011	Composition	Kenji Sakai [fr]	Concerto pour violon et orchestre
2012	Composition	Michel Petrossian	In the wake of Ea pour piano et orchestre

Media coverage and prizes awarded by audiences

The competition was covered on the Belgian radio from its first edition, the press writing about contestants and their performances. Broadcasting via television expanded in the 1960s. French-language and Dutch-language Belgian broadcasting organizations started to award prizes based on the preferences of their audiences from 1975 and 1991 respectively. Abdel Rahman El Bacha, Pierre-Alain Volondat, Severin von Eckardstein and Denis Kozhukhin were among the few contestants that were as convincing to the competition jury as to the general audience. Recorded performances were commercialised from 1967. In the 21st century recordings of the competitors' performances were streamed live on the internet and/or made available as video or audio downloads, followed by social media discussions.^[17]