Duo Crommelynck

Patrick Crommelynck was born in Brussels in 1945, Taeko Kuwata in Tokyo in 1947. Patrick studied with Stefan Askenase at the Brussels Conservatory, with Victor Merzhanov at the Moscow Conservatory, and with Dieter Weber in Vienna, where he met Taeko Kuwata, who was another of Weber's students. They married and formed their duo in 1974. They came to attention with their two-piano version of Brahms's 4th Symphony. They toured widely and a number of composers wrote works for them. and Tchaikovsky. These included 2-piano arrangements of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony, Dvořák's New World Symphony, and Smetana's Vltava from Má vlast. Their three-disc set of the four-hand piano works of Schubert won a Grand Prix du Disque from the Académie Charles Cros. They also recorded an entire CD of fragments and unfinished pieces by Mozart. ==Suicides==

During the weekend of 9–10 July 1994, at the height of their joint careers, they took their own lives in Brussels Patrick hanged himself first and his body was discovered by Taeko, who also decided to end her own life in the same way. Their bodies were discovered on Monday 11 July. The Athénée Royal de Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, a Brussels school founded in 1956, was renamed Athénée Royal Crommelynck, de Woluwe-Saint-Pierre after their deaths, in commemoration not only of them but also of other famous Crommelyncks, including the dramatist Fernand Crommelynck. ==Sources==