Chairman of the jury
Victor Legley
Belgium, °1915 - 1994
Victor Legley (1915-1994) received his first music lessons - in viola, harmony and counterpoint -with Lionel Blomme in Ypres. In 1935 he began his full-time musical education at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, where he earned first prizes in viola, chamber music, counterpoint and fugue.

From 1936 to 1948 he played viola in the Symphony Orchestra of what was then the NIR (National Broadcasting Corporation). On the advice of fellow violist Gérard Ruymen, he began to take lessons in composition with Jean Absil in 1941, a study that was rewarded in 1943 with the Second Rome Prize. After the war he played in the orchestra of the opera in Brussels and in the Déclin Quartet, in which he became acquainted with the music of Bartók and Schönberg.

In 1947, Victor Legley became a progammer for the NIR, and then advisor-department head for 'serious music' and for the third programme of the Flemish radio broadcasts. In this function, he attempted to promote contemporary music and Belgian composers in particular.

From 1948 to 1950 he was a teacher at the Municipal Conservatory in Leuven. In 1949 he was named professor of harmony at the conservatory in Brussels and in 1956 professor of composition and analysis at the Muziekkapel Koningin Elisabeth. He held both functions until 1979.

In 1965 Victor Legley became a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium and was its chairman until 1972. He was also the author of numerous articles for the proceedings of the Royal Academy for Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium. He was chairman of SABAM (the authors' rights association) from 1980 to 1992, and of the Union of Belgian Composers from 1986 to 1990. He has also often served as jury-member or chairman at international competitions, such as the Queen Elisabeth Competition, the Verviers International Competition of Lyrical Song, and the Bösendorfer-Empire International Piano Competition.

In 1986 he was appointed officer of the Order of Leopold. The Vrije Universiteit Brussel granted him an honorary doctorate in 1987. In addition, he has received a great many prizes and distinctions, both for specific works and for his complete oeuvre. He has also represented Belgium at various foreign festivals and new music conferences.
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Ton de Leeuw
The Netherlands, °1926 - 1996
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Klaus Huber
Switzerland, °1924 - 2017
Klaus Huber studied composition with his godfather Willy Burkhard in Zurich and with Boris Blacher in Berlin. In 1959 he had his international breakthrough as a composer with the first performance of the chamber cantata Des Engels Anredung an die Seele at the World Music Days of the IGNM in Rome.

From 1964 to 1973 he directed the composition class at the Academy of Music in Basel. In the same period he was director of the composition seminars at the Gaudeamus Foundation in The Netherlands. In 1969 he founded the international composers’ seminar in the Künstlerhaus Boswil (Switzerland). From 1973 to 1990 he lead the composers’ class and of the Institute for contemporary music at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, after which he started working exclusively as a guest professor.

In 1970 he received the Beethovenpreis of the city of Bonn (for Tenebrae), in 1978 the Art Prize of the city of Basel, in 2007 the European Church Music Prize by the city of Schwäbisch Gmünd and in 2009 the Music Prize Salzburg and the Ernst von Siemens-Musikpreis.

From 1979 to 1982 Klaus Huber was president of the Swiss Composers’ Association. He is member of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, of the Akademie der Künste Berlin and of the Freie Akademie der Künste Mannheim, honorary member of the ISCM as well as honorary doctor of the University of Strasbourg.

Since 1975 his works have been published by Ricordi Munich. His collected writings were published in 1999 under the title Umgepflügte Zeit by the Cologne-based Verlag MusikTexte; unterbrochene Zeichen - Klaus Huber 2005 by PFAU Verlag, in Saarbrücken; a double volume (137/138) of Musik-Konzepte 2007, edition text + kritik; and the book Klaus Huber: Von Zeit zu Zeit, Das Gesamtschaffen, Gespräche mit Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, published by Wolke Verlag 2009.
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Giselher Klebe
Germany, °1925 - 2009
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Luis de Pablo
- 2021
Luis de Pablo was born in Bilbao (Spain) in 1930 and started his musical studies very young. He then went on to study law at the University of Complutense in Madrid. Egged on by his interest in the most modern forms of art, Luis de Pablo, a lawyer at the time, endeavoured to complete his training through the personal and intense study of the major scores of the twentieth century ; practising composition in parallel as an autodidact. At the end of the 1950s, he gave up the law and started to have his works performed in public. In 1958, with Ramón Barcé, he set up the group Nueva Música, joined by Cristóbal Halffter. Since his early works of 1953, he has become renowned worldwide, maintaining his position as one of the foremost representatives of contemporary Spanish music. He is a teacher at the Madrid Conservatory and the founder of several ensembles and musical associations in his country. He has also been appointed visiting professor at a number of European and American universities. Most of his works, which total over a hundred, have been created outside his own country ; in Europe, America and Japan. They display a universal understanding of all musical genres and techniques anticipating new developments in contemporary music, and are integrated within a very personal means of expression which refuses to draw from the musical heritage of the past.
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Eugène Traey
Belgium, °1915 - 2006
Count Eugène Traey (1915-2006) was born in Amsterdam of Belgian parents and studied music at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Antwerp, where his piano teacher was Emmanuel Durlet. He went on to study in Paris under Robert Casadesus and in Germany under Karl Leimer and Walter Gieseking. After this international training as a pianist, Eugène Traey pursued a career both as a concert performer and a teacher at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, of which he was the director until 1980. He gave recitals, performed with orchestras and took part in chamber music recitals with Arthur Grumiaux and Jean Laurent, as well as performing piano duos with Frédéric Gevers. He was the founder of the deSingel concert hall in Antwerp and was a regular member of juries at international competitions (Moscow, Warsaw, Munich and Tokyo, among others). From 1982 until 1995 Eugène Traey presided over the jury of the Queen Elisabeth Competition.
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Frederik van Rossum
Belgium, °1939
Frederik van Rossum was born in Brussels. Since he was awarded the Premier Grand Prix de Rome in 1965, his works have won many international awards. His Réquisitoire for brass and percussion, for example, won First Prize at the International Rostrum of Composers backed by UNESCO in Paris in 1981. His First Violin Concerto was the compulsory work at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1980 and was subsequently the subject of five different recordings. In 1988 his Aria a modo di vocalizzo was the compulsory work for the semi-final of the Queen Elisabeth Competition for Singing. A brilliant orchestrator, van Rossum has written a number of works for orchestra with and without soloists. He has also composed chamber music and music for the stage and for opera, along with an extensive and varied range of works for the piano ; he is himself an excellent pianist and his works for the instrument occupy a central place in his oeuvre. Frederik van Rossum is a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. From 1995 to 2000 he was Composer in Residence of the Festival of Flanders.
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