I am excited to share my NEW SEASON of concerts! Here are the concerts for September and some of October. Concert schedule more detail and with ticket links can be found on my website - link in COMMENTS 👇👇
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A new challenge just started : being part of the jury for the final rounds of the Busoni Piano Competition in Bolzano.
Listening to 31 young artists with ears and heart wide open, and having the privilege to meet with extraordinary fellow jury members Saskia Giordini, Mariangela Vacatello, Pi-Hsien Chen, HieYon Choi, Josu de Solaun, Peter Jablonski, Sergio Tiempo and the president Sir David Pountney.
A competition is a life changing experience in any case, for all the pianists who experience it. I can already feel huge sympathy for all these young pianists who devoted so much time, concentration and love to prepare it.
It’s a joy to discover more about Busoni’s life and music at this occasion.
May this be a great celebration of music before anything else, wishing loads of strength to all candidates and perspicacity to us in the jury !
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DEAR ALL - thank you very much for the really interesting QUESTIONS !
:::: I with team will soon gather them all together for reading ! The questions that have not yet been answered will be answered a little later.
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#27K followers now 🔥 - I’m so grateful for my long-time wonderful community here ! Your support has meant and means a lot to me ! ::: I decided now to open a Q&A session ! Please ask me here in COMMENTS that matter most to you: about piano, composition, artistic life, or anything else.
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I’ll share my answers with you later on through short videos posted here ! Looking forward to your questions !
Lucas
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Quelle joie de revenir aux @pianosfolies du Touquet, pour retrouver les amis Yvan et Nadia, et avoir le privilège de jouer devant un public comptant Nikolaï Lugansky - qu’on ne présente plus - et @ariellebeckpianist, très jeune pianiste et compositrice à la personnalité déjà si marquée. Occasion rêvée de parler avec ces chaleureux musiciens de la vie sur scène, des compositeurs, d’harmonie et de contrepoint… entre autres !
J’y ai joué un programme comprenant ma Suite en ré mineur et 3 bis, dont le dernier était une improvisation libre. #pianist #musician #festival #friends
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#10yearsTCH15 Another look back at 10 years from my Tchaikovsky Competition. In 2015, there was also a Mozart concerto round. FULL YOUTUBE link here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP8g_1CB-30
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Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, which I played there, is still my favorite. Sometimes so hopelessly painful, with short moments of ecstatic happiness.
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I almost didn’t have orchestra experience at all and it was such a blessing to play that. I was happy to also present my own cadenza there.
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We were in such good symbiosis with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and the conductor Alexey Utkin. I melted into the music so much that I forgot the handshake with the concertmaster came back halfway. 😀
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#lucasdebargue #debargue #tch15 #pianocompetition #tchaikovskycompetition #Mozart # mozartpianoconcerto #frenchpianist
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#10yearsTCH15 Another look back at 10 years from my Tchaikovsky Competition.
👇FULL YOUTUBE link👇 in comments.
On June 24th, 2015, at 9:30pm, I played for the first time in my life with an orchestra on stage. It was during the second part of the second round of the 15th Tchaikovsky Competition, performing a Mozart piano concerto—an addition to the program that year, unlike the 2011 and 2019 editions.
In my dressing room, I was in a mental state beyond panic. I couldn’t clearly remember the piece, my entrances, the counterpoint of the final movement… I paced up and down, rushing to the keyboard to review a passage of sixteenth notes.
This time, my teacher Rena seemed at peace. She smiled at me and said: “You play very well.”
After being called on stage, I knew I would have to wait 2 minutes and 30 seconds during the tutti before the first solo. The conductor, Mo Utkin, and the orchestra managed to create a deeply inspiring atmosphere in the introduction, with touches of a baroque spirit. My shaking slowly moved from my arms to my feet.
The intensity of the musical message in this unique concerto gave me the sensation of undergoing an irreversible, initiatory journey. The 30 minutes passed in the blink of an eye.
I played my own cadenzas for the concerto, which already felt natural to me at the time. I later realized that this wasn’t so common—and even raised eyebrows among some performing pianists!
I am deeply convinced that the true respect we owe composers lies in getting closer to them through writing and improvising ourselves. Spending a musical life restricted to the strict interpretation of written texts—not a note less, not a note more—leads to narrowness, dogmatic obsession, and sterile comparison. The answers to the question “Why am I an interpreter?” risk becoming, over the years, those of an arts functionary rather than those of an artist—those of a collector rather than a creator. Follow that path, and you start as a musician and end as a music critic—which, to me, is hardly an upgrade.
The imitation of the same “correct” gestures over and over, generation after generation of pure interpreters, is a profession that cannot claim any true proximity to the creativity of the masters who are paradoxically revered for their originality—not for their puritanical textual accuracy. When intoxicated by the urtext virus, you end up playing eight notes in the left hand in bar 145 of the finale of K491 (which is, in fact, what I did here, 10 years ago—by mistake), and keeping a dominant seventh D chord in bar 60 (while the orchestra plays a subdominant chord!) in the finale of K503 just because it’s written, even though it clearly can’t be right.
In 2015, I was a 24-year-old skinny post-adolescent, in desperate need of support. I wasn’t easy to break, but very easy to confuse. A few months before the competition, I went to a lesson at the Paris Conservatory—where I studied in addition to Rena’s class at École Cortot—and my professor, laughing nervously, asked what I expected from the DVD I’d submitted to the Tchaikovsky Competition, and why I hadn’t told him I wanted to apply. He had a “friend” on the preselection jury who, he assured me, said I had no chance of getting in.
The odds were indeed slim—and despite the challenge of believing in myself with such shaky confidence, I made it to the finals. This unexpected turn—not only for me—sparked criticisms that still stick to me 10 years later: “amateur,” “not professional,” “technically weak.” Today, I can say that even if those labels have kept some doors closed along the way, I would never trade my freedom to become “more professional” or “technically strong.”
These words have nothing to do with my artistic priorities. And the fact that I’m still here, 10 years on, sharing music with people around the world, convinces me that what sustains this path must be something other than technical perfection or professionalism—as one might say of a bounty hunter: “Just hit the right note at the right time in the right style.” That meant nothing to me on that stage in Moscow. I believed my best offering was to sing and dance—even though my inner voice and soul were young and trembling.
So, the thoughts I had on July 24th, during the orchestral introduction of the Mozart C minor concerto, were something like a prayer. It began with the feeling of being very small in my mismatched suit; but then, the magic of Mozart’s music lifted me on its invincible yet fragile wings.
LD
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Incredible concert experience in St Tropez at the beautiful festival Les Nuits du Château de la Moutte !
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Cher Sebastien Robert-Derey, merci pour cet entretien pour la revue poétique Haies Vives qui nous a permis d’explorer ensemble, au cours d’un long échange, les liens entre musique et langage ; et de tenter de définir création et interprétation musicales jusqu’au seuil de ce qu’elles réservent de plus irrationnel et mystérieux…
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Sometimes it just happens that we meet other musicians where after a few notes of playing together there is an immediate sense of unique musical connection, everything just flows without any effort then.
It is an immense joy to embark on a new duo collaboration with the incomparable @lucasdebargueofficial
A musician whom I admire for his unique artistic voice both as a composer and pianist. We share very similar ideals, we ask very similar questions (e.g. “What is contemporary music?”) and are both dedicated to musicmaking in all its different meanings.
Together we are preparing a program called “The Art of Sonata” that focuses both on original sonatas of the classical canon (less and better known) as well as composing our own sonatas and improvisations in many different shapes and forms.
Premiere in June 2026, more infos coming soon.
Stay tuned!!!
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✨ Greatest thanks to OÖ. Stiftskonzerte for this incredible opportunity and memorable experience performing in this series at the magnificent Kaisersaal of Stift Kremsmünster !
It was a true pleasure to share my recital with such a warm and numerous audience. The program included: Ravel "Jeux d’eau", "Gaspard de la nuit", Sonatine; Fauré Mazurka in B♭ major, op. 32, Barcarolle No. 9 in A minor, op. 101, Nocturne No. 12 in E minor, op. 107, Impromptu No. 5 in F♯ minor, op. 102, Valse-Caprice No. 4 in A♭ major, op. 62 and my own Suite in D minor.
📸 Andrea Trawöger
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In ARTE Concert about Festival International de Piano de La Roque d'Anthéron 👉FULL HERE:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mIiLLTWITM
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Friedrich Gulda, genius pianist, composer, improviser ; forever inspiring provocateur. Much missed, in our artistic world where self-proclaimed gardians of « truth » - running around or comfortably sitting depending on the species - try their very best to enucleate artists and keep everything in order. #jazz #classicalmusic #fugue #groove
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Quand je suis arrivé à Royan pour répéter le cinquième Concerto de Saint-Saëns avec maestro Jérôme Pillement et l’orchestre du festival Un Violon sur le Sable je ne connaissais ce festival que de loin, à travers le témoignage d’amis musiciens.
Le découvrir sur place a été un choc. J’en suis parti très inspiré par de multiples rencontres, dont celle avec l’initiateur du festival Philippe Tranchet et son équipe, dont je salue à la fois le courage et l’intelligence humaine !
Jouer devant ces dizaines de milliers de personnes sur le sable, en partageant l’affiche avec de tels artistes étaient une expérience absolument hors du commun ! Merci. ❤
Photo: Fotogriff
#lucasdebargue #debargue #unviolonsurlesable #musicfestival #classicalmusic #pianist #frenchpianist
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