It was created by the pianist Marguerite Long and the violinist Jacques Thibaud.
That year, in honour of the French soprano Régine Crespin (1927–2007), it was expanded to include singers, and renamed.
[4] Yehudi Menuhin headed the violin jury from 1993 till his death in 1999.
[3] The winners in the inaugural contest (1943) were Samson François (piano) and Michèle Auclair (violin).
[2] Other notable prize winners include: Paul Badura-Skoda, Kristóf Baráti, Dmitri Bashkirov, Anshel Brusilow, Joaquin Achucarro, Alexandre Brussilovsky, Stanislav Bunin (1983), Olivier Cazal, Jean-Philippe Collard, Youri Egorov, Arnold Eidus, Brigitte Engerer, Philippe Entremont, Aldo Ciccolini, Victor Eresko, Devy Erlih (1955, violin), Verda Erman (1963),[6] Vladimir Feltsman, Christian Ferras, Peter Frankl, Nana Jashvili, Sergey Kravchenko, Marina Goglidze-Mdivani, Lydia Mordkovitch (1969),[7] Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, György Pauk, Jorge Luis Prats (1976),[8] Nelli Shkolnikova, Raphael Sobolevsky, Vladimir Spivakov, Gabriel Tacchino, Jean Ter-Merguerian, Cédric Tiberghien, Julian Trevelyan, Tamás Vásáry, Vladimir Viardo, Jean-Pierre Wallez, Oxana Yablonskaya, Diana Tishchenko (2018), Kenji Miura (2019), Masaya Kamei and Hyuk Lee (2022).