51st International Horn Symposium

The Ghent Royal Conservatoire has been passionate about the horn from its very first day. The institute was founded in 1835 by horn virtuoso Martin-Joseph Mengal who set high standards for a legacy of horn playing that has been vital to horn playing worldwide. Players from Ghent have exported their amazing sense of style and impeccable technique all over the world. The famous American horn pedagogue Philip Farkas stated his Ghent-trained teacher Louis-Victor Dufrasne (1878-1941) as being ‘the single biggest influence in my life’.

During the twentieth century, many Ghentians, as Charles Heylbroeck (1872-1945), Maurice Van Bocxstaele (1897-1974), and André Van Driessche (1936-2014), have shaped horn playing in Belgium and abroad. Today, Ghent is an amazing and vibrant university city that is centrally located at the crossroads of German and French culture, in between some of the major centers of the Western classical music scene: Paris, Amsterdam, London, and Cologne.