The violin competition of 1971 marked a first in the history of the competition, as it was a woman who won the First Prize, the Israeli Myriam Fried, who led the way for many other female laureates. That year, the public discovered a young woman from Ghent, timid and outstandingly gifted: Edith Volckaert. She had already won several international competitions, and, with her amazing gifts, had been following since the age of six the classes of one who would be her only teacher: the pedagogue and soloist Carlo Van Neste. She came fifth in the competition, ending her performance of Shostakovich's First Concerto in a state of exhaustion before the man who first performed it and now jury member: David Oistrakh. On this album she can also be heard in the laureates' concert where, now rested, she produced a magnificent performance of Bartók's Second Concerto.

The career of Edith Volckaert was shattered 20 years later by an illness that came far too early. She recorded little, and this album enables us to pay homage to her art and to bring back to life what remains one of the finest moments in the history of Belgian laureates at the Queen Elisabeth Competition.