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Michel Block plays Chopin Etude in C minor Op. 10 No. 12

3,684 views · Published 12 October 2010 · 2:38 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: gullivior · 2010 · Music

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Michel Block  
Born: Jun 12, 1937 - Antwerp, Belgium
Died: March 4, 2003 - Bloomington, Indiana, USA
 
The Belgian pianist, Michel Block, was born in Antwerp to French parents. He was still a child when his family moved to Mexico, where his grandfather had settled in 1870. Block's father, likewise born in Europe, had moved to Mexico when he was 19. Block studied piano there as a youth, later relocating to New York where he enrolled at the Juilliard School. In one of the most famous incidents in the history of piano competitions, Michel Block won the Arthur Rubinstein Prize in Warsaw at the 1960 Frederic Chopin International Competition. Outraged with the jury's verdicts, Rubinstein established the prize on the spot, and personally presented the award to Block. Two years later, in 1962, he won the prestigious Leventritt Award in New York, adding his name to the illustrious list of winners, among which Alexis Weissenberg, Van Cliburn, Eugene Istomin, etc.

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