Chairman of the jury
Arie Van Lysebeth
Belgium, °1938
Arie Van Lysebeth was the President of the Jury of the Queen Elisabeth Competition from 1996 to 2018. He took up the violin at the age of four. He completed his higher education at the Brussels Conservatory in music theory, bassoon, chamber music, and orchestral conducting. Following a competition, he was appointed bassoon soloist of the Belgian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra. Two years later, he came joint first in the Prague International Bassoon Contest. He also studied conducting under Bruno Maderna in Salzburg and under Pierre Boulez in Switzerland. Starting in 1970, he conducted the Flemish Chamber Orchestra, both in Belgium and abroad. As a guest conductor, he has appeared with the major Belgian orchestras as well as with symphony orchestras in the United States of America, Argentina, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany. He has performed with many famous soloists, including Igor Oistrakh, José Van Dam, Murray Perahia, and Augustin Dumay. From 1995 to 2004 he was the regular conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of the Brussels Conservatory, where he taught chamber music for many years (1970-1994) and served as director (1994-2003). From 2004 to 2014, he was the artistic director of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel.
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Martin Beaver
Canada, °1967
The Canadian violinist Martin Beaver was a member of the Tokyo String Quartet from 2002 to 2012. In addition, his career as a soloist has taken him to every corner of the world, with, among others, the San Francisco Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, and the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, under conductors such as Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Raymond Leppard, Gilbert Varga, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. In chamber music, he has appeared alongside Leon Fleisher, Pinchas Zukerman, Lynn Harrell, Sabine Meyer, and Yefim Bronfman. Martin Beaver studied under Claude Letourneau, Carlisle Wilson, Victor Danchenko, Josef Gingold, and Henryk Szeryng. A laureate of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1993, he has also won prizes at the Indianapolis and Montreal international competitions and has made a number of recordings for René Gailly, Naim Audio, Naxos, Biddulph, Toccata Classics, SM 5000, and Harmonia Mundi. He has served on the juries of a number of competitions, including the Queen Elisabeth Competition and the Montreal, Osaka, and Melbourne competitions. Martin Beaver has taught at the Peabody Conservatory and New York University, among other institutions, and has been an artist in residence at the Yale School of Music, where he was awarded the Sanford Medal. He currently teaches at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles.
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Augustin Dumay
France, °1949
The international career of Augustin Dumay began in 1980 when Herbert von Karajan invited him to perform as a soloist with the Berliner Philharmoniker. Since then, he has regularly performed with the Berliner Philharmoniker, the BRSO, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, the London Symphony, the Philharmonia, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, conducted by I. Fischer, D. Harding, R. Ticciati, C. Dutoit, D. Zinman, S. Ozawa, Y. Temirkanov. He has been the music director of the Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra in Osaka (Japan) since 2011 and is master in residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel. His discography includes more than forty CDs for Warner, Deutsche Grammophon and Onyx, which have won many international awards. His recording of the Beethoven sonatas with Maria João Pires is regarded by critics as a major achievement. His forthcoming recordings will be of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sonatas and partitas, and of concerti by Berg, Bartok and Stravinsky with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. Augustin Dumay plays a Guarnerius del Gesù from 1743 (ex-Kogan).
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Daniel Hope
Great Britain
An exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2007, the British violinist Daniel Hope has received four Grammy nominations and has won five ECHO Klassik Prizes. Among the conductors with whom he has worked are H. Graf, D. Harding, K. Masur, K. Nagano, R. Norrington, S. Oramo, M. Rostropovich, and C. Thielemann. He appears regularly with major orchestras and has performed in the world’s greatest concert halls. His musical mentors were Zakhar Bron, with whom he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and Yehudi Menuhin, with whom he had a particularly close artistic relationship that began when he was eleven. From 2002 to 2008 he was the youngest member of the Beaux Arts Trio. He has also played with, among others, T. Adès, Y. Bashmet, P. Entremont, L. Harrell, K. and M. Labèque, J. Laredo, M. Padmore, and M. Pressler. He has conducted chamber orchestras such as the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Camerata Salzburg, and Concerto Köln. He is interested in contemporary music and has enjoyed close contact with composers such as H.K. Gruber, S. Gubaidulina, G. Kurtág, K. Penderecki, A. S chnittke, T. Takemitsu, and M.-A. Turnage. He is the artistic director of the Savannah Music Festival and of the Mecklenburg Vorpommern Festival. Away from the concert stage, he has written books as well as scripts for a variety of multidisciplinary and poetry projects.
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Yuzuko Horigome
Japan, °1957
Yuzuko Horigome started learning the piano at the age of four; she began the violin the following year, with Ryosaku Kubota. In 1975 she continued her violin studies with Toshiya Eto, before graduating from the Toho Gakuen School of Music in 1980. That same year she became the first Japanese musician to win First Prize in the Queen Elisabeth Competition. She has played with the Berlin and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, the London, Chicago, St Petersburg, Montreal, Vienna, and Tokyo Symphony Orchestras, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, La Scala (Milan), the RAI Orchestra, the New Japan Philharmonic, and the Camerata Salzburg. She has performed with prestigious conductors such as C. Abbado, A. Prévin, K. Masur, C. Dutoit, R. Chailly, E. Leinsdorf, S. Ozawa, I. Fischer, S. Rattle, A. Dimitriev, V. Ashkenazy, and S. Vegh. In chamber music she has played with M. Argerich, A. R. El Bacha, P. Rogé, W. Manz, G. Kremer, P. Graffin, T. Zehetmair, N. Imai, K. Kashkashian, M. Maisky, A. Meneses, and many others. Yuzuko Horigome has been and continues to be a guest at many international festivals, including Marlboro, Lockenhaus, Tanglewood, Musicfest La Jolla California, Lugano, and Buenos Aires. A guest teacher at the Brussels Conservatory, she is one of the most prominent soloists in Japan, where she tours for several months every year.
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Lewis Kaplan
United States of America
For 50 years, Lewis Kaplan has divided his career between performing and teaching. As a performer, he has premiered over a hundred works as soloist or at the head of the Aeolian Chamber Players, an ensemble he founded in 1961. He has also appeared as conductor or violin soloist with the likes of Jaime Laredo, Szymon Goldberg, Ruggiero Ricci, Richard Goode, Murray Perahia, Rudolf Firkusny, and Horacio Gutierrez. He has recorded for CBS Masterworks, CRI, Folkways, and Odyssey Records. Lewis Kaplan has devoted much of his time to teaching, and more particularly to teaching the technique of his mentor Ivan Galamian. For 20 years he was a professor at the Mozarteum’s Sommerakademie (1987-2007). He teaches at the Juilliard School, from which he graduated in violin and conducting, at Mannes College, and at the Bowdoin Festival, of which he is the founder and current director. Since 1999, he is a Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Music in London. He is also regularly invited to give master classes by the most renowned conservatories and has served on the jury of numerous international competitions, including the Fritz Kreisler (Vienna), Mozart (Salzburg), and Concert Artist Guild (New York) competitions. He has been awarded the Federal Republic of Germany’s Bundesverdienstkreuz (Order of Merit) and the William Schuman Scholar’s Chair at The Juilliard School in 2011.
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Min Kim
Korea
The leading Korean violinist Kim Min is highly respected as a soloist, as a chamber musician, as an educator, and as a music director. Born in Seoul, he graduated from the National University of his home town and from the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg, where he worked with Thomas Brandis and Max Rostal. While studying in Germany, he performed frequently on international tours. In 1979 he returned to Korea, where he was appointed leader (concertmaster) of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and the KBS Symphony Orchestra. He was appointed professor of violin at Seoul National University and also took over the leadership of the Korean Chamber Orchestra, which he has developed into one of the country’s finest ensembles. He has given over 500 concerts worldwide with the KCO in celebrated venues such as those of the Rheingau, Naantali, and George Enescu festivals and the Beethoven Easter Festival. He has served on the jury of major international competitions. He served as Dean of the Music Faculty of Seoul National University from 2000 to 2006 and is currently an emeritus professor there. He is a member of the National Academy of Arts of the Republic of Korea and is also music director of the Seoul Isang Yun Ensemble and the Seoul International Music Festival. He has been awarded the Premio Galileo (Una vita per la Musica) by the President of Italy and the Polish government’s Merit to Culture award.
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Philippe Koch
Belgium
Descended from a leading family of Liège musicians, Philippe Koch graduated in Liège before undertaking further studies with C. Ferras, P. Amoyal, and A. Grumiaux. Cconcertmaster of the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, he has also had a solo career throughout Europe, Japan, the United States, and South America and has played with many renowned orchestras and conductors. A great enthusiast for chamber music and contemporary music, he has explored many aspects of both with the Grumiaux Trio, the Quatuor Louvigny, and the Brussels String Quartet, as well as in the Koch Trio with his daughter Laurence (violin) and his son Jean-Philippe (piano). His other partners have included G. Caussé, A.R. El Bacha, P. Gillilov, M. Kliegel, E. Moguilevsky, and S. Wieder-Atherton. Philippe Koch teaches at the Conservatoire Royal de Liège and frequently gives master classes in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, and Japan. He is also interested in orchestral conducting and has been invited to conduct a number of ensembles. His recordings (more than 30 CDs, ranging from Mozart to Bussotti, via Arensky, Vieuxtemps, Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Pierné) have won numerous awards from the international specialist press, including the ‘Diapasons d’Or’, the ‘Choc’ awarded by Le Monde de la Musique, and Repertoire Magazine.
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Boris Kuschnir
Austria
Boris Kuschnir was born in Kiev and studied the violin at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with Boris Belenky and chamber music with Valentin Berlinsky of the Borodin Quartet. His many encounters with Shostakovich and David Oistrakh (with whom he also studied), had a lasting influence on his artistic development. He was a founding member of the Moscow String Quartet, with which he played for nine years. He also founded the Vienna Schubert Trio and the Vienna Brahms Trio. Since 2002 he has also been a member of the Kopelman Quartet. He has made numerous recordings for labels including EMI and Naxos and has won numerous prizes at international competitions for both violin and chamber music. Boris Kuschnir teaches at the Vienna Conservatory and at the University of Music in Graz; his pupils have included J. Rachlin, N. Znaider, L. Baich, and A. Soumm. Boris Kuschnir is a member of the jury of various international music competitions (including the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, the Paganini Competition in Genoa, and the Long- Thibaud Competition in Paris) and performs with distinguished partners. He was awarded the use of the Stradivarius violin (‘La Rouse Boughton’, 1703) by the Austrian National Bank in recognition of his services to music.
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Jaime Laredo
Bolivia, °1941
Jaime Laredo has had a distinguished career, spanning more than fifty years, as a soloist, orchestral conductor, and chamber musician. His musical personality was strongly influenced by his experience as a pupil of musicians such as J. Gingold, P. Casals, I. Galamian, and G. Szell. His First Prize in the Queen Elisabeth Competition, at the age of 17, launched his international career ; since then, he has appeared, as a soloist and as a conductor, with the world’s greatest orchestras. He has worked with conductors such as D. Barenboim, Z. Mehta, S. Ozawa, L. Slatkin, C. Davis, E. Ormandy, L. Stokowski, and G. Szell. He has also performed regularly as a member of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio and alongside his wife, the cellist Sharon Robinson. Jaime Laredo has recorded almost 100 discs, a number of which have won awards : his recording of the Brahms piano quartets with his regular partners Emmanuel Ax, Isaac Stern, and Yo-Yo Ma, for example, won a Grammy Award. Having previously taught at the Curtis Institute of Music and at Indiana University’s Jacob School of Music, he now teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Jaime Laredo is Music Director of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra and Principal Conductor of the Westchester Philharmonic. He and his wife are the Artistic Directors of the Linton Chamber Music Series in Cincinnati.
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Mihaela Martin
Romania, °1958
Mihaela Martin was born in Romania and has won many prizes at international competitions. After winning 2nd Prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition at the age of 19, she also distinguished herself at the Montreal, Sion, and Queen Elisabeth competitions. Her 1st Prize at the Indianapolis Competition opened the way to a distinguished international career. Her debut at Carnegie Hall was enthusiastically received. Since then, Mihaela Martin has made a name for herself as a soloist with a vast repertoire and has been the guest of many orchestras. She has performed with the BBC Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the Salzburg Mozarteum, and the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester under such conductors as K. Masur, N. Harnoncourt, C. Dutoit, and N. Järvi. She also regularly performs at chamber music festivals with a variety of partners, including M. Argerich, Y. Bashmet, E. Leonskaya, N. Imai, L. Fleisher, and M. Pressler. In 2003 Mihaela Martin set up the Michelangelo String Quartet. A regular jury member at the Indianapolis, Enescu, and Tchaikovsky competitions, she teaches at the Musikhochschule in Cologne, the Kronberg Academy and the Barenboim-Said Akademie of Berlin, and also was a professor at the Haute École de Musique in Geneva.
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Igor Oistrakh
Russian Federation, °1931 - 2021
Igor Oistrakh, the son and pupil of David Oistrakh, was born in Odessa in 1931. He won first prizes in the Budapest International Competition of 1949 and at the Wieniawski International Competition in Poznan´ in 1952. His Western debut took place at the Royal Albert Hall in London and was followed by concert tours throughout the world. Igor Oistrakh has performed with the world’s greatest orchestras under conductors such as O. Klemperer, F. Reiner, H. von Karajan, E. Ormandy, C.M. Giulini, G. Solti, L. Maazel, S. Ozawa, and G. Rozhdestvensky. He also performed with Pablo Casals and Yehudi Menuhin. For 27 years Igor Oistrakh played in a unique duo with his father, with whom he made several recordings. Since 1968 he has conducted chamber and symphony orchestras as well as performing as a viola player. He has recorded for EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, RCA, Collins, Melodia, and Art and Electronics. The recipient of numerous awards, he is President of the Fondation César Franck and serves on the jury of highly prestigious violin competitions (including the Tchaikovsky, Wieniawski, and Carl Flesch competions). Since 1996 he has been a professor at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels.
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Gérard Poulet
France
Gérard Poulet, son of the violinist and orchestra conductor Gaston Poulet, entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris at the age of 11; he won his first prize there the following year. He studied with Zino Francescatti, Yehudi Menuhin, Nathan Milstein, and Henryk Szeryng. At the age of 18 he won First Prize at the Paganini Competition in Genoa. Gérard Poulet has played with many great orchestras, including the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre National de France, the national orchestras of Strasbourg, Lille, Bordeaux, and Lyons, the Orchestra of the RAI, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Liège Philharmonic, and the Beijing Symphony Orchestra. A regular guest at major festivals all over the world, he also serves on the jury of a number of prestigious international competitions. A great teacher, he gives master classes and teaches at the Vienna and Beijing Conservatories, the École Normale Supérieure de Paris, and, since 2004, the Tokyo University of the Arts. He has made many recordings, as a soloist, with orchestras, and in chamber music, of works by Lalo, Bartók, Schubert, Franck, Lekeu, Pierné, Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky, among others, and of the Bach Sonatas and Partitas (1996), highly acclaimed by the musical press.
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Vadim Repin
Russian Federation, °1971
Vadim Repin gave his first major recital in St Petersburg at the age of 11. At the age of 14, he made his debuts in Tokyo, Munich, Berlin, Helsinki and, at 15, at Carnegie Hall in New York City. At the age of 17 he was the youngest violinist to win the Queen Elisabeth Competition, which had a considerable impact on his career. France has made him a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Career highlights include tours with the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev (with whom he gave the first performance of James MacMillan’s Violin Concerto dedicated to him), the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Zubin Mehta, and the Vienna Philharmonic and Riccardo Muti. He founded the Trans-Siberian Art Festival in 2014 and, as artistic director, has commissioned works by Lera Auerbach, Sofia Gubaidulina, Arvo Pärt and Mark-Anthony Turnage. Closely involved in music education, he has given masterclasses at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and is an honorary professor at the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
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Vera Tsu Weiling
China
Born in Shanghai, Vera Tsu Weiling began studying the violin with her father, Tsu Chi Peng, before going on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing with Lin Yaoji. In 1980 she went to pursue her studies at the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music, under Dorothy DeLay and Rafael Bronstein. She has appeared with many orchestras, including the New York City Symphony, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, the Hanover Symphony Orchestra (Pennsylvania), the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, the Budapest Radio Orchestra, the WDR Rundfunkorchester, and the China Central Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1993 she was invited to give a solo recital at the gala concert of the Légion d’Honneur at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. In 1998 she appeared with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in Berlin and in China. At the opening of the Shanghai Oriental Art Center in 2005 she played the Beethoven concerto, with K. Penderecki as conductor. Her recordings of the Korngold and Goldmark concertos were warmly acclaimed by the critics. Vera Tsu Weiling serves as a member of the jury of many prestigious competitions. Since November 2000 she has been professor of violin at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. In 2009 she founded the China Trio.
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