The Queen Elisabeth Competition for the piano has provided Muso with an opportunity to launch a series of re-releases of recordings by laureates who have...

The Queen Elisabeth Competition for the piano has provided Muso with an opportunity to launch a series of re-releases of recordings by laureates who have marked the history of this celebrated competition. In particular, the new series allows us to rediscover an artist who has had a major influence on musical life in Belgium for over 50 years: Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden. Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden was just 16 when he won the third prize in the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1964. His teacher, the renowned pianist and educator Eduardo del Pueyo, gave the go-ahead to his young student, who had just finished his studies at the Conservatory, to take part in a competition whose past laureates had included pianists such as Leon Fleisher, Maria Tipo, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Lazare Behrman- in the wake of the first prize awarded in 1937 to Emil Gilels. Despite his young age, the Belgian musician showed astonishing artistic maturity right from the first round. The archives of the competition allow us to hear again his superb performance of Schumann's Etudes symphoniques alongside Liszt's First Concerto and Beethoven's First Concerto, recorded at a laureates' concert.