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Lucas Debargue

7 days ago

Here is possible to follow Lucas' concert with Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne. He is playing Mozart Piano Concerto in C Minor no 24. It starts now, 20.00 CET.
www.rts.ch/play/radio/livepopup/espace-2 ... See MoreSee Less

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Lucas Debargue

1 week ago

Lucas gave an interview to Radio France International Russian section after his recital in Philharmonie de Paris 14th of October.
👉"At the concert, something must happen, vibrate and tremble. The concert should be extreme and even traumatic. A concert is not just a pleasant moment. It should not be a pleasant moment." ...

Some excerpts in translation:
-You played at the Tchaikovsky competition Nikolai Medtner’s 1st sonata and brought to life this Russian composer, who was forgotten even in Russia. Now you play a Medtner sonata again.
We know Medtner so poorly. When I announced that I would play his sonata in my recital at the Philharmonie de Paris I had to explain that it is not the same sonata that I played at the Tchaikovsky Competition. Medtner is not well known; he is not performed enough, but he is a great composer and wrote 14 large piano sonatas. He stands side by side with such great Russian composers like Scriabin or Prokofiev. His work is a huge part of Russian music. I don’t know what happened to it and why he is less known. Maybe his name sounded too German. But his music deserves to be performed, deserves attention, and that’s what I try to do – to play it and to pay attention to this music.
-In your program was also Liszt’s fantasy-sonata “After Reading Dante”. One of the listeners sitting next to me said that it seems that you are looking for composers who were outside of their time and the mainstream. Is it so?
I feel like I’m outside of my time as well. So it is not surprising that I’m interested in composers who lived in their time, responded to what was happening around them but whose work broke boundaries and was ahead of their time. Scarlatti is much more modern than many modern composers. To me, his music sounds much more revolutionary and modern, while remaining classical and romantic. The most important is what a musician does with the work. To place an artist inside a historical context – this is the work of professors and specialists. Liszt was such a strange person, a virtuoso composer who began to write music after Chopin and found his own language. He loved literature and knew it well. Liszt was neither a university professor nor a scientist, but books inspired him. His second ballade that I played at the concert is based on a Gothic piece which reminds me very much of Sleepy Hollow. It’s not about a headless horseman, but about a vampire horseman, who’s gloomy and completely amazing.
I don’t think as a pianist. Besides that, I write music, improvise, hear symphonic music, string quartets. So I don’t feel like a pianist. Rather like a musician. To me it is important to be constantly connected to the world of other arts: to read, to watch a movie, to carefully choose who I communicate with – to prevent destructive relationships.
I can’t say that I love piano the most - a salon piano that ladies and gentlemen can come to listen to on weekends for half an hour of pleasant music. These kinds of things always seemed to me boring. I love living art, there must be a movement at the concert, something must happen, vibrate and tremble. And if there is no vibration, I would even say, this crisis, then the concert doesn’t work. The concert should be extreme and even traumatic. A concert is not just a pleasant moment. It should not be a pleasant moment.

-Your way to the big stage was unusual. For some time, you completely stopped with music. Now sometimes critics say: "he has too much expression". Looks like music critics are either confused or afraid of you.
After the Tchaikovsky competition, I played many recitals and learned more than twenty big works. It’s hard to do more than I did then. I can’t convince those who think that I am doing things incorrectly. They don't like that I am different from those who belong to their environment. But my way is just the way of a living person, not the way of an object. I am not an object. My interest in art woke up in my childhood, I noticed things I liked in nature, in the music. I didn’t grow up in an artist’s family. I made artistic discoveries myself. Art is here to free us, to comfort us and to help us. Not to bring us back into the state of slavery.
I would like to say one more important thing. My concerts are my job. But it doesn’t free me from the responsibility of being a human. Kafka wrote about it. I must learn to have a home and to earn a living. Everybody has a job; my metier is music. Nowadays people think that making music is something extraordinary, attractive, enviable. For me it is just a profession, like all the other professions. Yes, of course, it is a huge part of my life, the main part. But it is not the whole life. I need to meet people, feel their love, give them my love and not just sit at the piano like a statue eight hours a day.
Any activity, including music, needs food. If someone has no life experience, he has nothing to say in music. I often hear nice young musicians with perfect, pure, polished play, everything is great - but behind it is emptiness. There is no life in music. You just hear a young musician who spends eight hours playing the piano and wants to become the world’s finest pianist just to please their parents, teachers and critics. But music is nothing without life, it leads us to life, to spirituality, to religion, to death and love. And when we play Chopin, Liszt, Bach or Prokofiev, their works tell us about it. You can’t just learn the notes by following your teacher’s instructions and go to the stage with it. Music is research and musician is a researcher. He must look for and find something in the music. And concerts are an opportunity to share with the audience that you have found.

-So, the critics are still figuring out who you are but the audience just loves you. Many big musicians are pleased to collaborate with you. For example, Gidon Kremer. What did work with him bring to you?
With Gidon Kremer we have now a real friendship. Everything started with music, now we have mutual respect and closeness. For me, he is not only an inspiration - I feel a deep spiritual closeness to him. He is an example of artistic honesty for me. We often text and call and meet when we can. I also work a lot with Mikhail Pletnev and collaboration with him is getting closer and closer. We played recently together in Moscow and Abu Dhabi. We have a great understanding and many joint projects. He is a very important person in my musical path.
I had some other incredible meetings as well - for example, I worked with Janine Jansen and Martin Fröst, with Olivier Messiaen's End of Times Quartet and played with Valery Gergiev several times in these four years. After all, that's what matters. These people don't need me for their careers. If they came to me, it's because they wanted to work with me. And it gave me confidence.

-There is another name who we can’t miss. It’s Rena Shereshevskaya to whom you have always been grateful. Do you continue working together?
There is a lot of true love between us. We have been brought together by music and by a common understanding. We don’t see each other very often, but we follow each other and don’t lose sight of each other. Rena still gives me a lot. I think I’m providing her something too now, it’s a mutual process. Meeting Rena was a huge success for me. If I hadn’t met such an attentive and understanding teacher, I wouldn’t have become a pianist. She was the first teacher whose advice I listened to. We worked a lot to get deeper into the works. For me, she was a real mentor who supported me and was always present for me. After all, that’s what a teacher needs - dedication, passion. A music teacher is also an artist, not an office worker. It’s a very big responsibility.

-In Russia, you are known and loved. Do you perform there often?
I go often to Russia. I have at least one solo concert in season. I've played in many cities - Yaroslavl, Irkutsk, Kostroma, Samara, Vladivostok, Nizhny Novgorod, Tomsk, Surgut, Khanty-Mansiysk - and next year Omsk, Novosibirsk – can’t even name all of them right now.
-One of your encores was your own work, right?
It was my Toccata in B Minor. Classical music is changing a lot now. Not long ago, us were given such modern works that everyone had to praise but at the same time had to plug their ears, it was such terrible music. But now there is another generation of composers, they are attracted by the beauty in art. I am very close friends with Stéphane Delplace and Jérôme Ducros. I write myself, but I don't want to please some professional caste and I don't want to write according to any models. Music is an ordinary thing. Something there is in balance, something is falling apart. You must pay attention to beauty, it’s the main thing and see if your music isn’t falling apart. And not to claim some personal style, which in our time has become a sort of mania. Everyone wants to have its own style, forgetting that great composers worked on it for many years. And more importantly, it was not their priority. We forget about the real brotherhood that should exist between musicians. About the fact that we should share our discoveries. And if I could change that a little bit, I'd be happy. ... See MoreSee Less

Люка Дебарг: «Я чувствую себя вне времени»

На следующий день после сольного концерта в Парижской филармонии французский пианист Люка Дебарг встретил �...

Lucas Debargue

1 week ago

An overview of Lucas' album "Scarlatti. 52 sonatas" in Boston radio station WCRB.
www.classicalwcrb.org/post/debargue-unravels-mystery-scarlattis-sonatas#stream/0
Primavera Consulting ... See MoreSee Less

Debargue Unravels a Mystery with Scarlatti's Sonatas

French pianist Lucas Debargue fell in love with Domenico Scarlatti’s shortest keyboard sonata at the age of ten – and now, nineteen years later, that

Lucas Debargue

2 weeks ago

More impressions about Lucas' album "Scarlatti. 52 sonatas".
➡️"You can hear that in the crisp technique Debargue applies, a sensitivity that actually elevates the music’s emotionality. He puts his own stamp on these pieces, employing subtle dynamics and richly realized ornamentation, as well as a fine sense of space, which includes occasionally exaggerated pauses. He conveys a baroque flavor that feels true to what I imagine was Scarlatti’s intent."
blogcritics.org/music-review-lucas-debargue-scarlatti-52-sonatas/ ... See MoreSee Less

Music Review: Lucas Debargue - 'Scarlatti: 52 Sonatas' | Blogcritics

Pianist Lucas DeBargue brings out a stunning array of emotions and effects in 52 inventive and ahead-of-their-time sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti.

Lucas Debargue

3 weeks ago

About Lucas' album "Scarlatti. 52 sonatas" in British Gramophone.
www.gramophone.co.uk/review/d-scarlatti-52-keyboard-sonatas-lucas-debargue
Sony Classical, Primavera Consulting ... See MoreSee Less

D SCARLATTI 52 Keyboard Sonatas (Lucas Debargue) | gramophone.co.uk

With the bar for Scarlatti interpretation set as high as it is today by harpsichordists of the communicative depth and technical brilliance of Pierre Hantai and Jean Rondeau, pianists do well to think...

Lucas Debargue

3 weeks ago

About Lucas' recital in the Philharmonie de Paris 14, of October.
bachtrack.com/critique-debargue-scarlatti-medtner-liszt-philharmonie-paris-octobre-2019
English translation:

Lucas Debargue at the Philharmonie de Paris : an insane hegemony of the moment

Everyone was present at the Lucas Debargue’s highly anticipated recital at the Philharmonie de Paris, an audience full of admirers, spectators, editors and critics. Since his appearance at the 15th Tchaikovsky Competition, the pianist, criticized by some and praised by others, continues to be controversial. Nonconformist in both his personality and his approach to music, his play and his program choices leave nobody indifferent. This magical and colourful recital was proof of it.
He dedicated the first part of his recital to Scarlatti, whose 52 sonatas he recently recorded for Sony Classical. His Scarlatti sonatas, unlike Horowitz are far from those small polished jewels, with wonderful clarity in the well-balanced form, masterpieces of carving. On the contrary, Debargue in his interpretation “rubs” himself against the raw, irregular and feral material. Under his fingers, these sonatas reveal capricious brilliance. Debargue highlights angles and contrasts, creates different layers, overthrows them without warning, pushes all bases out of position, astonishes. Each sonata is a world by itself. In his play there is a huge palette of contradictory emotions, he articulates them and complements them one against the other. The delicacy of the Sonata K.206 with which the concert opened soon gives way to the gravity and suffering, octaves in the left hand sound strikingly tragic. In K.253 can be heard rural and solemn mods. Debargue’s fast tempos are connected with great sensitivity. Especially memorable was his refined pianissimo in the sonata K. 206. Really beautiful! The pianist prefers different atmospheres and uses a wide variety of interpretative techniques.
Debargue is never satisfied, makes no compromises. Such a sincerity makes him so controversial and interesting. Every time he is new again and his play is always unpredictable, unexpected, confusing and surprising. Storytelling is always a part of his sonatas. It‘s almost like theatre: echo effects in the K.404, jumps, sudden turns and pianissimo’s. Debargue plays with all that. Playfulness goes hand in hand with experimentation. He is testing, offering, discovering and creates an impression that he reinvents every time a new interpretation. The second half of the sonata K 253 even gives the illusion of improvisation.
Such a spontaneity also has another side. There is a certain problem with connectivity. This kind of ingenuity and renewal is sometimes made at the expense of the inner logic of the sonata and can disorient the listener, who can lose the thread of the structure. In that sense, Debargue is not satisfied, removes the struts and generates rhythmic instability, especially in the sonatas K.404 and K.115. His vision is primarily local; there is a danger to see it as a sequence of moments, masterfully performed but somewhat confusing because this extravagant storytelling has no clear direction. Debargue’s Scarlatti interpretation is demanding to the listener and questions everything that they have heard earlier.
After the miniatures, it was time for big romantic forms. Medtner’s Sonata op. 22 was played masterfully, with power and with excellent control over the silence and various moments. The melodic material created a sometimes gloomy and fatal atmosphere and the pianist was completely captured by this. Liszt’s Sonata “After Reading Dante” makes you listen differently. Here the use of rubato and dynamics is like that: where time slows up, Debargue accelerates it. The brilliance of interpretation had one risk: an occasional lack of clarity. Chords, fed by silence, literally come off the keyboard to add to the pauses even more agitation. It takes a lot of courage to play presto in the final under the sordino and at the full speed to the very last notes.
What makes Lucas Debargue different from the other pianists is his personality, which manifests itself in everything what he performs. Unlike a “Parnassian” vision that a pianist is only a medium through whom the sacred score will be heard, Debargue sees in the score a raw source material for his own construction. It’s not music that is revealed by the pianist, but it is a pianist who manifests himself in music. In this sense, he looks like a tamer, but a tamer who forces his lion to disobey. ... See MoreSee Less

La folle hégémonie de l'instant : Lucas Debargue à la Philharmonie

Lucas Debargue, comme toujours, ne laisse personne indifférent. Retour sur une soirée haute en couleurs avec Scarlatti, Medtner et Liszt.

Lucas Debargue

3 weeks ago

Some Sorbonne students essays about Lucas' recital in Philharmonie de Paris 14th of October.
www.culture-sorbonne.fr/sonates-lucas-debargue-philharmonie-de-paris-octobre-2019/ ... See MoreSee Less

Sonates / Lucas Debargue / Philharmonie de Paris / Octobre 2019