VIDEO PODCAST: Discussion about Bernard Haitink (1929-2021), Salzburg, Roger Doyle's Finnegans Wake Project, the English Symphony Orchestra, the Chopin Competition Warsaw, Los Angeles Opera and other subjects in our hour-long November 2021 video.
VIDEO PODCAST: John Dante Prevedini leads a discussion about Youth Involvement in Classical Music - this specially extended illustrated feature includes contributions from Christopher Morley, Gerald Fenech, Halida Dinova, Patricia Spencer and Roderic Dunnett.
Belgian composer, teacher and musician was born in Vilvoorde on 7 May 1901. At the time of Poot's birth, his father was director of the Royal Flemish Theatre in Brussels. His father pushed him to train as a musician, but he was slow to learn and it took two attempts to get him admitted to the Brussels Conservatory, where he studied composition and instrumentation. Later he studied with Paul Dukas in Paris.
At the start of his career, he worked as a freelance composer, teacher and reviewer. He became a member of Les Synthétistes - the Belgian equivalent of Les Six.
Poot became known for the first time outside Belgium in 1934 with his Ouverture joyeuse, dedicated to Dukas.
From 1939 he taught at Brussels Conservatory, where he was director from 1949 until 1966.
He founded (in 1960) and was the first president of the Union of Belgian Composers, and he was chairman of the jury (1963-1980) of the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition, for which he wrote several commissioned works.
Marcel Poot died in Brussels on 12 June 1988, aged eighty-seven.