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.

Dutch-born Belgian composer of stage, orchestral, chamber, choral, and piano works; however, Frédéric Devreese is best known for his many memorable film scores and for his conducting. He received his first musical training from his father and then studied in Brussels (composition with Marcel Poot and conducting with René Defossez). He went on to study composition at the Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome and conducting at the Wiener Staatsakademie. At the age of nineteen, he received the Prize of the Town of Ostend for his Piano Concerto No. 1. In 1983, his Piano Concerto No. 4 was the compulsory work for the Queen Elisabeth Competition. Devreese has received several national and international awards, including the Prix Italia for his TV opera Willem van Saeftinghe, the Georges Delerue Award, the Plateau Music Award (twice) for his film music, and the Klara-Carrièreprijs (2006). As a conductor, he has made a number of recordings for the Naxos Anthology of Flemish Music, for which he was nominated Cultural Ambassador of Flanders in 1996-97.

Franco Donatoni (1927-2000) commence à jouer du violon à l'âge de sept ans et se consacre entièrement à la musique dès la fin de ses études secondaires. Il suit les cours de composition d’Ettore Desderi au Conservatoire Giuseppe Verdi à Milan et ceux de Lino Liviabelle au Conservatoire Giovanni Battista Martini à Bologne. Il obtient ses diplômes de chef de chœur en 1950 et de composition en 1951. Il se perfectionne en suivant les cours de composition d’Ildebrando Pizzetti à l’Académie Sainte-Cécile à Rome et obtient son diplôme en 1953. Enfin, il participe aux cours d'été de Darmstadt en 1954, 1956, 1958 et 1961.

Les premières expériences compositionnelles de Franco Donatoni sont fortement inspirées des œuvres de Bartók, Hindemith et Stravinsky. Suite à sa rencontre avec Bruno Maderna en 1953, il se rend à Darmstadt où il se convertit au sérialisme et où il rencontre Karlheinz Stockhausen et John Cage. Musica (1955), Composizione (1955), Tre improvvisazioni (1956) et Quartetto (1958) sont marquées par les influences de Webern, Boulez et Stockhausen.

Au cours des années 1960-1961, Franco Donatoni concentre ses recherches sur le matériau et compose des pièces de musique de chambre comme For Grilly (1960) et des symphonies comme Sezioni (1961) et Puppenspiel I (1961). Les années suivantes, influencées par John Cage et Franz Kafka, sont caractérisées par une tendance au négativisme et à l’autodestruction. Réfractaire à l’égotisme, le style de Donatoni se définit par une attitude de retrait personnel devant la logique interne de l'écriture. Ainsi, dans Quartetto IV - Zrcadlo (1963), Asar (1964) et Black and White (1964), l'expérience de décomposition aboutit à une désacralisation totale de la créativité. Cette réflexion sur les virtualités latentes de la substance musicale, et sur ses capacités à subir certaines modifications, prend corps avec Babai pour clavecin (1964) et Divertimento II pour cordes (1965) et aboutit à la définition de principes « modificateurs » - Souvenir (1967) - soit accidentelle - Orts (1969) -, soit obtenue par la technique sérielle - Etwas ruhiger im Ausdruck (1967). Gli estratti (1969-1975), Solo pour dix cordes (1975) et Duo pour Bruno pour orchestre (1974-1975) sont exemplaires de ces divers procédés de manipulation du matériau.

Après une période de silence et de dépression, la mort de Maderna en 1973 redonne à Donatoni le désir d’écrire. Il développe alors un style ludique et imaginatif et se réconcilie avec l'expressivité, le lyrisme et les caprices de l'invention. Cette nouvelle sérénité s’incarne dans l’œuvre Spiri (1978).

Les dernières compositions de Franco Donatoni dénotent à la fois un retour progressif à la musique vocale - L'ultima sera (1980) ; De près (1981) ; In cauda ; Atem (1985) - et une nouvelle tendance gestuelle, que l'on trouve surtout dans les œuvres de musique de chambre - Spiri (1980), The Heart's Eye (1981), Arpège (1986), ainsi qu'une influence du jazz - Hot, Blow, (1989).

Franco Donatoni enseigne l’harmonie et le contrepoint notamment à Bologne et à Milan et participe régulièrement aux cours d’été de Darmstadt. Professeur de composition aux conservatoires de Turin et de Milan, ainsi qu’à l’Académie Chigiana à Sienne puis à l’Académie Sainte-Cécile à Rome, il exerce une grande influence sur la jeune génération des compositeurs italiens. Il donne également des séminaires en Suisse, en France, en Espagne, en Hollande, en Israël, en Australie (Institut Culturel Italien de Melbourne) et en Californie (Université de Berkeley).

Une série de concerts lui est consacrée en 1990 par le festival Settembre Musica et en 1992 par le festival Milano Musica.

En 1985, Franco Donatoni reçoit les insignes de Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres par le ministère français de la Culture ; il est également membre de l’Académie philharmonique romaine et de l’Académie Sainte-Cécile à Rome.

Les œuvres de Franco Donatoni sont publiées chez Zanibon à Padoue, Schott à Londres, Boosey & Hawkes à Londres, Suvini Zerboni à Milan (de 1958 à 1977) et Casa Ricordi à Milan (depuis 1977).

Henryk Gorecki studied composition with Boleslaw Szabelski at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice from 1955 to 1960. After a post-graduate sojourn in Paris, he became a professor of composition at the School of Music in Katowice, and in 1975-1979 its Rector. As a composer, he was known and respected in Poland, a long time before the rest of the world. The phenomenal success of his Symphony no. 3 astounded many of his contemporaries, especially in Poland, where the work had been known for more than a decade. In his home country Górecki's Third was perceived as one of a series of fascinating compositions, the result of a long and complex creative evolution.

Born in Jette (Brussels) in 1932, Jacques knight Leduc studied at the Royal Music Conservatory of Brussels. He learend composition under the guidance of Jean Absil and was awarded the Rome Prize in 1961.
Other composition prizes have also marked his career: the annual competition of the Belgian Royal Academy, the Agniez Prize, the Prize of the Brabant District, the international competition G.B. Viotti (Vercelli - Italy), the Fuerison Prize, the Koopal prize, the SABAM prize at the international composition competition for string quartet in Liège, and the international composition competition for guitar Castelnuovo-Tedesco (Ancona - Italy).
Jacques Leduc wrote more than 75 symphonicworks, concertanti, chamber music works and solo pieces, including a concerto for piano, which was the compulsory work for the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1972.
Director of the Music Academy of Uccle (from 1962 to 1983), Jacques Leduc was also professor at the Royal Music Conservatory of Brussels (from 1957 to 1997) and rector of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel (from 1976 to 2004). He is president of the Belgian society of authors, composers and music editors (SABAM) and president of the Union of Belgian composers.
As an elected member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium, he has assumed the presidency of it since 1992.

Alexander Mullenbach (Luxembourg) studied piano, chamber music and composition at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He has composed more than 60 works since 1978, 6 of them for large orchestra. His compositions appear at major festivals such as Salzburg in 1986, the Festival du Midem Classique in 1986, Styrian Autumn in 1987, Echternach in 1987 and 1989, the International Summer Academy of the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Musica Strasbourg in 1991 and Europa Musicale Munich in 1993.

He has also composed set pieces for international competitions, viz. the International Mozart Competition Salzburg in 1988 and the European Piano Competition in 1987. His works have been played by Heinrich Schiff, Roberto Szidon, Roberto Fabbricanti, Edda Silvestri, Gottfried Schneider, Irena Grafenauer, Elliot Fisk and the ensembles Musica Viva of Dresden and Alter Ego of Rome. Conductors of renown have conducted his symphonic works: Ernest Bour, Leopold Hager, Günther Neuhold, Hans Graf, Udo Zimmermann.

In parallel with his activity as a composer, Alexander Mullenbach has devoted himself intensively to teaching at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, where he presently is the Director of the Summer Academy, and the Conservatory in Luxembourg. He has given numerous concerts in Europe and Canada as a pianist, chamber musician and accompanist.

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.

Dutch composer Theo Verbey first achieved recognition with his orchestral arrangement of Alban Berg's Piano Sonata op.1, a piece he orchestrated in1984 while still a student at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. He studied music theory from 1978 to 1984 and composition from 1982 to 1985 at the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague with Peter Schat and Jan van Vlijmen. He attended courses in Poland and Germany and in 1998 he studied Digital Recording & Mixing at the College of Multimedia in Amsterdam. In 2002 he followed a course choral conducting.

Since 1984 Theo Verbey has taught at the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague, and since 1995 he teaches composition and instrumentation at the Conservatory of Music in Amsterdam. In 1992 and 1997 he was a member of the jury at the Queen Elisabeth Composition Competition and in 1998 he was invited to join the jury of the National Composition Contest in Taipei (Taiwan). In 2001 he was visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Music in London and composer-in-residence at the Europäisches Musikfest Münsterland.

He has twice received commissions for new works from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Alliage and LIED). In the 2009-2010 season, Theo Verbey was invited to be Composer in Residence for the Brabant Philharmonic Orchestra's 60th anniversary season. His composition Orchestral Variations was written to commemorate that festive celebration.
Theo Verbey's works have provided the musical basis for two highly successful ballets by Dutch choreographer Regina van Berkel: Memory of a Shape with Ballet Mainz in 2008, and Frozen Echo with Ballet am Rhein in 2011.

Theo Verbey's completion of Stravinsky's 1919 version of Les Noces was chosen in 2010 by Queen Beatrix to be performed at Her palace in the Hague as part of the annual Queen's Day Concert. The performance, featuring 16 vocalists and pianola, two cembaloms, harmonium and percussion, was broadcast live on Dutch national television.

His compositions have been performed repeatedly by almost all the Dutch orchestras and ensembles including: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Radio Philharmonic Orchestra Holland, The Hague Philharmonic, ASKO|Schönberg Ensemble, Nieuw Ensemble, Radio Chamber Philharmonic and Amsterdam Sinfonietta. Conductors such as Riccardo Chailly, Oliver Knussen, Markus Stenz, Robert Spano, Neeme Järvi, Claus-Peter Flor, Christopher Hogwood, Hans Vonk, Lev Markiz, Lucas Vis, Ed Spanjaard, Jac van Steen, Reinbert de Leeuw, Jan Stulen and Jurjen Hempel have performed Verbey's works.

Foreign ensembles and orchestras that have performed his work are: Toronto Symphony Orchestra, cond. Peter Oundjian, Gewandhausorchester, cond. Riccardo Chailly, Beijing Symphony Orchestra, cond. Tan Lihua, London Sinfonietta, cond. David Atherton, Ensemble Musikfabrik, cond. Johannes Kalitztke, Klangforum Wien, cond. Beat Furrer, Münchener Kammerorchester, cond. Christoph Poppen, Bochumer Symphoniker, cond. Jac van Steen, The New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Tetsuji Honna, Tanglewood New Music Ensemble, cond. Robert Spano, Esprit Orchestra Canada, cond. Alex Pauk, Absoluut(te)? Ensemble New York, cond. Kristjan Järvi, Psappha North England, cond. Nicholas Kok, Brodsky Quartet, and the Gageego Ensemble Sweden.

He has written vocal music for Olaf Bär and the National Youth Choir Holland, cond. Wilma ten Wolde.
Verbey has been a guest at festivals such as the Donaueschinger Musiktage 1992 (Germany), and had his music performed at Tanglewood New Music Festival 1993 (USA), Holland Festival 1996, Ultima Festival Oslo 1996 (Norway), Music Tapei 1998 (Taiwan), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 1999 (United Kingdom), La Biennale Venezia 2007 (Italy), Cello Biennale 2007 Amsterdam.