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 audience. 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.

« Ceci n’est pas un concours »

It is with this title, paraphrasing the famous quote by Belgian painter René Magritte, that we could have named the Première competition. The term competition too often refers to a sense of competitiveness, performance, and rivalry that have no place in artistic creation. In this type of competition, all the participants are colleagues with whom you are potentially going to work. Our aim is to select new-generation chamber music ensembles that fulfil in an exciting and different way the three required approaches : artistic, scientific, and rhetorical. And to offer these groups the opportunity to perform in an excellent early music festival, where they will be heard by an enthusiastic jury and audience.

PREMIÈRE 2026

Dresden and Saxony

After the Grand Tour in 2023, Brussels and the Netherlands in 2024, and the Repubblica Serenissima of Venice in 2025, the 2026 edition of FestiVita! unfolds a musical program around Saxony, and more specifically its capital Dresden. It is within this new edition of FestiVita! in the splendid venues of the Cercle Royal Gaulois in the heart of Brussels that this new edition of the ‘Concours Première’ will take place.

Following Lionel Meunier in 2022, Marco Beasley in 2023, Bernard Foccroulle and Frédéric de Roos in 2024, and Amandine Beyer in 2025, Kris Verhelst and Peter Van Heyghen will be the sponsors of FestiVita! 26. A couple of well-known Belgian musicians, they will be sharing their love of Saxon music in concerts and discussions, notably during the ‘Round Table’. They will also be the sponsors 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 (sense of style, ornamentation, improvisation, rhetoric, instrumentation, pronunciation, basso continuo, temperaments, placement of musicians, 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, etc.

After a pre-selection through video, 5 selected ensembles will be invited to take part in the finals at FestiVita! 26 on Saturday, 14 February 2026, where they will compete for the Jury 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
Kris Verhelst and Peter Van Heyghen, sponsors of FestiVita! 26
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 2026

Application form

Thank you to the players of Loterie Nationale

PAST EDITIONS

PREMIÈRE 2025

PRIX PREMIÈRE & PRIX DU PUBLIC: CONSORT LA CAPRIOLA

Camille Fritsch canto
Charlotte Gerbitz violino soprano & alto
Dorine Lepeltier-Kovács violino tenore
Manon Papasergio violino basso & arpa doppia