King Philippe and Queen Mathilde attended the first session of the finals for the Queen Elisabeth Music Prize, which this year was opened to cellists.
The royal couple arrived at the Bozar Centre of Fine Arts in Brussels in the evening of Monday, 30 May, to watch the first two finalists perform a piece of music of their choice and the unpublished work of Jorg Widmann.
This is the finals’ format for the awards scheme – 12 finalists have the opportunity to perform in front of a public, sometimes with extraordinary guests.
The finals will take place until Saturday, 4 June, when, after the last performance, the jury will announce the winner of the 2022 Queen Elisabeth Music Prize.
This year marked a return to the pre-pandemic format of the event. In 2020, the competition had to be cancelled, and in 2021 it took on a restricted format: only six finalists, instead of the usual 12, and no public allowed for the performances.
The first six places receive a monetary prize and the title of “Laureate.” The compensations are provided by various entities, including the Belgian federal government and the City of Brussels.
The preselections are based on videos submitted by candidates when they sign up to participate, and the first round does not have a closed number of candidates. The candidates then undergo three public phases: selections, which slim down the competition to 24 semi-finalists; semi-finals, which reduce the participants to the 12 finalists; and finals, when the first six positions are determined.
The prize was founded in 1937 by Queen Elisabeth of Belgium and Eugène Ysaÿe, a Belgian composer and violinist. It has been one of the most well-established music prizes in the world ever since. It focuses on different classical music disciplines, one each year: piano (since 1937), violin (since 1938), lyric singing (since 1988) and cello (since 2017).
Queen Mathilde took over the royal patronage of the prize in 2013, following the death of Queen Fabiola, whom herself took over the patronage from Queen Elisabeth in 1965.
