In presenting this picture of the numerous activitiesof the Brussels Philharmonic Society, it is fittingto begin by placing the Society in its proper frame:the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.

It was during the 1914–18 war that the BelgianGovernment at Havre, bent on putting an end to thelong-standing dearth of concert halls and artgalleries in the capital, approved as part of itsrehabilitation scheme the construction in Brussels(a town of nearly a million inhabitants, in a smallcountry of eight million) of a building designed forall kinds of artistic activity. The Palais desBeaux-Arts is to be found in the very centre of thetown, that is, in the administrative and artisticquarter. Begun in 1922, this masterwork of BaronHorta was not completed until 1929. The scheme ofthe Palais comprises a very large collection ofhalls of different aspect, fitted out for concerts,exhibitions, plays, films, lectures, dancing, andfashion parades.