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One of the world’s most prestigious and longest-running arts events, the Queen Elisabeth Competition was created in 1937 under the name Ysaÿe Competition, with the chapter devoted to piano first held in 1938.
Subsequently named the Queen Elisabeth Competition, the next instance of the piano competition was held in 1952. It can boast such laureates as Valery Afanassiev, Brigitte Engerer, Emmanuel Ax, Michael Ponti, and earlier, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Cécile Ousset, Lazar Berman, Leon Fleisher, Emil Gilels and Moura Lympany. An impressive pedigree indeed.
Now, the Competition is held annually, well supported by corporate sponsorship, and with quadrennial rotations of chapters for piano, violin, cello and voice.
So much depends on the quality of the entrants. Some 300 applied for the 2025 competition, the pre-selection jury (probably one of the most crucial in any competition) chose 70. All of the pre-selection jury have also judged subsequent rounds, lending consistency to the adjudication procedure. Ten competitors withdrew, so 60 played in the quarter finals, 24 were chosen for the semifinals (several of whose rounds I attended), and 12 were chosen for the finals.
Both the semifinals and finals include commissioned works. In the case of the former it was a pair of Studies by Belgrade-born Ana Sokolović. The finalists will be given just a week to learn a new concerto entitled Music for the Heart by Kris Defoort, which they will play alongside the 19th-20th-century concerto of their choice. This has always been traditional at this Competition and of course, puts extra pressure on the finalists.
In all, the Competition runs for four weeks, including a week-long break between the semi-finals and the finals. The quality of many of the contestants I heard in the semifinals was extraordinarily high, which says a lot for the fine pre-selection and, also, the eminence of the jury, which, for this edition included such luminaries as Imogen Cooper, Anne Queffelec and Lilya Zilberstein.
The jury are strictly not allowed any discussion among themselves. They simply give the contestant a score, which then determines whether the contestant progresses to the next round, and how they are placed in the Finals.
Simply put, the best competitions (The Sydney surely among them) offer the listener a veritable festival of piano music, sometimes far exceeding the quality of many a subscription series. This was no exception. The first and second rounds took place in Brussels’ Flagey building, which seats just under a thousand and has some of the finest acoustics one could wish for – both warm and clear from almost any vantage point.
Only one piano, Steinway’s newish brand, the ‘Maine’ was used – unlike The Sydney where piano brands are rotated, but not unlike the Leeds, which only uses a Steinway. There are several national broadcasters (take note, ABC!), vigorous and informed broadcast discussion, a passionate and generally very respectful audience, and of course, music-making on the highest level.
The semifinal rounds include both a Mozart concerto and a 40-minute recital, and each of the two sessions per day gave you two Mozarts and two recitals. Commercially speaking, this is real value for money, and most tickets for all rounds (not just the finals) were sold out weeks in advance.
You got all kinds of Mozart – Mozart where the piano climbs the operatic stage, elegantly-shaped Mozart, Mozart with abandon and China Doll Mozart, but also sewing-machine Mozart and some regrettably prosaic Mozart.
A standout was the 23-year-old Dutch Nikola Meeuwsen’s E flat concerto, K.471, where one could easily have dismissed the finale as “too fast”. In fact, it would be difficult to imagine it being played any faster. Yet, there was diamond-like clarity and ravishing phrasing, preceded by a slow movement with the kind of intensity I’ve seldom heard. Meeuwsen has made it to the finals.
Other standout performances were the Korean Jinhyung Park’s Schumann Fantasie, Op. 17, with barely a slip in the pianistic graveyard of the second movement, a real sense of architecture throughout, and a finale of which dreams are made. Regrettably, he didn’t make the finals.
One of the most satisfying performances of the Competition – or for me one of the greatest of anything I’ve heard anywhere, anytime – was the Belgian Valère Burnon’s Prokofiev Eighth Sonata, performed with breadth and dignity, trenchancy and lyricism, and such a firm grasp on the piece’s architecture, that it would be hard to imagine better. Deservedly, Burnon did make the finals.
Performing Prokofiev’s Sixth Sonata before him, Uladzislau Khandohi, who was placed second at The Sydney in 2023, regrettably didn’t.
Nor did a popular entrant, Yali Zaken, from Israel, who delivered one of the most benedictory Mozart K.595s you could envisage.
The only Australian/Spanish entrant, Nicolas Margarit, didn’t progress past the first round.
Such is the nature of competitions. Not all your favourites make it, but in this case most of the best ones are in the Finals. Watch them online if you can, on the Competition’s website.
For me, I can only say, it’s been one of the most exhilarating and satisfying weeks of my musical life. The Sydney’s 2027 chapter, which will mark its 50th anniversary, is not far away, if you want to immerse yourself in a similar experience closer to home.
You can watch and listen to this year’s rounds at the Queen Elisabeth Competition here.
The finals take place from 26–31 May, 2025.
Cyrus Meher-Homji, OAM, is Senior Vice President at Universal Music Australia, and a member of the Board of Directors of both, Piano-Plus (which governs the Sydney International Piano Competition) and the Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge Foundation. In 1999 he founded the reissue series ‘Eloquence’.
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