Edith Volckaert

Edith Volckaert was a Belgian violinist born on August 27, 1949 (Heifetz was 48 years old.) Someone wrote a biography about her but I do not own it. Since there is precious little information about her on the web, I can only mention that she recorded several albums (works by Beethoven, Vivaldi, Bartok, Cesar Franck, and others) before her early death on July 2, 1992 (at age 42) and that she was the fifth prize winner in the Queen Elizabeth of Belgium violin competition in 1971. Volckaert also taught at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels until 1978. Her CDs can be easily found on the internet. She played a 1620 Maggini. That’s about it. On a different topic, I am guessing that great composers have always been pianists. It seems logical since the piano covers such a wide spectrum of notes all at once, obliging the player to think and see vertically, as if visualizing a score. Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev were pianists (or keyboardists.) Sibelius might be the only exception, if one considers him a great composer. There are many second (and third) tier composers who were violinists though: Vitali, Geminiani, Tartini, Molter, Vivaldi, Corelli, Paganini, Spohr, Rode, Viotti, Wieniawski, Enesco, Ernst, De Beriot, Sinding, Vieuxtemps, Bridge, Novacek, Sarasate, Kreisler, Elgar, Ysaye, and more.