FRANÇAIS / NEDERLANDS

The Première Chamber Music (Early Music) competition on historical instruments seeks to promote young musicians who bring their artistic, scholarly, and rhetorical approach to the fore. It is the subtle balance between all these qualities that the competition seeks to reveal to an open-minded and enthusiastic public. Early music is in a constant flux, and its performance codes keep evolving as performers explore and re-visit historical sources. This competition is an ideal opportunity to refresh early music, to offer it new purposes, and new vitality.

PREMIÈRE 2025

Music in the Repubblica Serenissima of Venice between 1500 and 1797

After the “Grand Tour” in 2023 and “Brussels and the Southern Netherlands” in 2024, FestiVita! 2025 will focus on the Repubblica Serenissima of Venice. This new edition will also be hosting the 3rd ‘Première Competition’ in the splendid halls of the Cercle Royal Gaulois in the heart of Brussels.

Following Lionel Meunier in 2021, Marco Beasley in 2022, Bernard Foccroulle and Frédéric de Roos in 2023, Amandine Beyer will be this year’s invited sponsor. An exceptional musician, she will be sharing her love for Venetian music during two concerts and her talent as a communicator at a “Round Table.” She will also be the sponsor of the Première Competition.

Candidates are selected according to three criteria:

Artistic criterion: the quality of the musical performance.
Scholarly criterion: the quality of cultural/historical research, both in terms of content and choice of the program, organological coherence, respect of historical practices (partimenti, improvisation, cantare super librum, specific organology, set-up and placement of musicians, pronunciation, rhetoric, etc.).
Rhetorical approach: the quality of communication with the audience through an oral presentation that invites the listener to be more receptive to the performance. This communication in French, Dutch or English can be creative, atypical, scripted, etc.

After a video pre-selection, 5 selected ensembles will be invited to take part in the finals at FestiVita!25 on Saturday, 22 February 2025, where they will compete for the Premiere Prize and/or the Audience Award. For their performance, each selected musician will receive a fee of EUR 500.

We look forward to meeting you and listening to you,

Marc Vanscheeuwijck, Chairperson of the Première Competition
Amandine Beyer, sponsor of FestiVita!25
Michel Keustermans, artistic director of FestiVita!

”Research must help us to (…) keep our eyes open to the inherently critical and revisable nature of our regulative concepts. Most importantly, it helps us overcome that deep-rooted desire to hold the most dangerous of beliefs that we have at any time got our practices absolutely right.” Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in The Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 284.

Application Requirements

Application form

Thank you to the players of Loterie Nationale