Robert Soetens

Robert Soetens (19 July 1897 – 22 October 1997) was a French violinist, remembered particularly for premiering the Violin Concerto No. 2 of Sergei Prokofiev in 1935.

Robert Soetens was born in Montluçon, France in 1897, into a musical family of Belgian origin. His father had been a student of Eugène Ysaÿe. He played in public at age seven, and at the age of 11 he also studied with Ysaÿe. At 13 he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied under Vincent d'Indy, Camille Chevillard and Lucien Capet.

At the age of 16, he played in the premiere of the First String Quartet of Darius Milhaud, a fellow student at the Conservatoire. He left the Conservatoire to enrol in the army during World War I. On his repatriation he became leader-soloist of an orchestra at Aix-les-Bains, and later with orchestras at Cannes (where André Messager was one of the conductors), Deauville, and Angers. He was also playing regularly in Paris, where he became friendly with other members of Les six. In 1921 he married the soprano Maud Laury, but they soon separated.

In 1925 Soetens gave the first performance of Maurice Ravel's Tzigane (in the revised version for violin and piano), and then he went on a Scandinavian tour with Ravel.

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