Trial by Music

The musical world has no obstacle course so packed with tortures, traps and terrors as Brussels' Queen Elisabeth Concours.* Last month 59 young, healthy pianists from 20 countries turned up to compete for world renown. By last week a dozen enervated ghosts were left to ache up to the piano and venture the stipulated "transcendental difficulties" of the Concours finals (TIME, June 6. 1955). The requirements: one short solo piece, one undesignated concerto and--to assure transcendental difficulty--a modern, unpublished concerto by Brussels' Rene Defossez. The finalists were bundled into the comfortable Chapelle Musicale and told they had a week in which to learn the strange new work.

Two Russians entered the piano contest for the first time since the war--highly skilled and even more highly touted. One was Lazar Berman, 26. whose performance in the eliminations got rave reviews ("a stormy and sometimes savage nature but with absolutely sensational qualities"). Berman practiced from 9 a.m. to midnight, with time out for meals, went to bed with bleeding fingertips. He thought he played his final concert "rather well. But I always feel I played less well than I could." The second, Vladimir Ashkenazy, 18, who "stupefied" a critic with his technique and profound insight and his colleagues by memorizing the Defossez in two days. Other front-runners in the final twelve were Denver-born John Browning, 23, and Poland's Andrzej Czajkowski (pronounced Tchaikovsky), 20. On the advice of Manhattan's Leon Fleischer, who won the last piano Concpurs, Browning chose Brahms's Concerto No. 2 for his big selection, playing it stunningly, and he was the first finalist to bring order out of the Defossez chaos. Czajkowski reminded observers of Chopin (he is attractive to women and prefers composing to playing) and amused them with his jokes. But his playing was no joke to his intense competitors.

The finalists finished up at the rate of two a night. Each night, haggard but happy, the contestants went through a ritual, solemnly crossing the silverware at the places of the two absent finalists who were performing that night, sticking a knife into an erect piece of bread at each place and turning the chairs upside down. At week's end, at last they filed onto the stage, where they heard the verdict of the 13-member panel of judges (including Pianists Artur Rubinstein, Robert Casadesus, Emil Gilels). The winners: first Ashkenazy, second Browning, third Czajkowski.

-Held one year for violinists, one for pianists, one for composers, with an intermission every fourth year.

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