Home for the QE

Competition is “a high point for every Belgian musician”

For John Gevaert, one of the three Belgian candidates this year, life goes on. When I speak to him, he’s making his way home to Sint-Katelijne-Waver from playing a lunch-time concert. Yesterday, he explains, he spent the whole day giving piano lessons at the music academy in Tervuren. “The competition interferes with work,” he jokes. “I’ve taken a few weeks’ vacation.”

The main challenge, the 26-year-old says, is not so much technical as mental. “You have to stay calm and focus and not allow yourself to be distracted by other things that come along. I plan to be practising five to 10 hours a day.”

The demands are in fact enormous: in the first round, every single player has to prepare three études: one each by Chopin, Liszt and Debussy, as well as two others from a list of composers. On top of that, they have to play a prelude and fugue from Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier and, finally, a work of the candidate’s own choice.

“The entire repertory for the competition comes to about three hours of work that has to be learned by heart,” Gevaert explains. “It’s one of the hardest competitions in the world, but that’s also what makes it so inspiring. It’s also one of the oldest and has a nice history. It’s very exceptional.”

Gevaert is no stranger to competition. In fact he was described by Olympic sprinter Kim Gevaert as “extremely competitive”. She should know, since she’s his big sister. Growing up as the youngest of four children, he was also involved in athletics, and Kim took music lessons. It was partly her example that inspired him to take up the piano at the age of seven.

At 15, he started getting interested in classical music. “I’d been taking lessons from the age of seven, but I was only playing pop and jazz, as well as improvising – making up music just to amuse myself. That’s unusual for a classical musician, and I think it’s given me a different outlook. Later, I really started to listen to classical music, and it was so beautiful; I just wanted to learn all those pieces at once. I haven’t stopped since.”

As one of the three Belgians (Stephanie Proot from Ghent and Nicolas Franco from Ciney are the others), Gevaert has a home-team advantage. But doesn’t it make it even more intimidating, having watched the gruelling process in previous years, even if only on TV?

Not for Gevaert. “It’s more inspiring,” he says. “The Queen Elisabeth competition is a highpoint for every Belgian musician. And I’m playing for the home crowd. I feel as if I’m better prepared. I know the venues. I have my family by me – even though they might not be able to take the stress of coming to see me. I can practice on my own piano, and I get to come home every evening.”

Perhaps more than anything else, he has the support of his wife, Katrijn Simoens, herself a pianist who plays four-hand concerts with him as Pianoduo Mephisto, as well as performing with her two sisters in the Simoens Trio. “She’s of enormous value to me,” he says. “Her advice and comments help me a great deal. Even just to stop practising and listen to her play the piano in another part of the house is a great inspiration.”

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