Michel Block

Michel Block (January 12, 1937, Antwerp–March 4, 2003, Bloomington, Indiana) was born of French parents in Antwerp, Belgium. He was a renowned pianist and winner of the 1962 Leventritt Competition. As a child, he moved with his parents to Mexico, where his grandfather had settled in 1870. Block studied piano in that country and later at the Juilliard School in New York City.

In one of the most famous of all competition incidents, Block won the Arthur Rubinstein Award in Warsaw at the 1960 International Chopin Piano Competition. As a contestant in that year's competition, he failed to capture the top prize. What he did capture, however, was the attention and allegiance of one of the jurors, Arthur Rubinstein. The legendary Polish-American pianist created the Arthur Rubinstein Award then and there for Block, a dramatic gesture that said plainly and loudly that he believed Block should have been the winner. Two years later, Michel Block won the Leventritt Competition in New York, adding his name to the illustrious list of winners, among which Alexis Weissenberg, Van Cliburn, Eugene Istomin, etc.

Like most pianists of renown, Block appeared with the great orchestras and conductors in the United States and in Europe. Among them were the Berliner Philharmoniker, New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam; and among the conductors, Georg Solti, Carlo Maria Giulini, Riccardo Muti, and Bernard Haitink.

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