NEWS

Lucas Debargue

2 days ago

Next stop - with violinist Sergey Krylov tomorrow in Appiano at Schloss Freudenstein. The program includes Bartók’s First Rhapsody, Ravel’s Sonata in G major, "Tzigane", and Beethoven’s celebrated “Kreutzer” Sonata.
We look forward to seeing you there ! ... Voir plusVoir moins

Lucas Debargue

3 days ago

Looking forward to seeing you tonight in Elbphilharmonie Hamburg ! Concert info in comments.👇 ... Voir plusVoir moins

Lucas Debargue is in Aquitaine.

1 week ago

A nice surprise, to have received the visit of a very special listener tonight after the concert : François-Frédéric Guy PRO ! I remember his first recording of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier for Harmonia Mundi as being a very strong inspiration in my early teenage years, after having listened to him play live in Albertville in 2003. ... Voir plusVoir moins

Lucas Debargue

1 week ago

En attendant le concert de ce soir à Périgueux, je ne pouvais pas ne pas m’arrêter devant la maison d’enfance du Pèlerin de l’Absolu, Léon Bloy.

Cet homme dont la voix sonne tour à tour comme celle d’un ange ou d’une gargouille, a élevé l’invective jusqu’au sublime. Personnage toujours controversé de la littérature française - comme tous les artistes dont les blessures excèdent aussi bien les limites de la bienséance que celles de l’exhibitionnisme, et pour qui la sobriété ne saurait jamais être un gage de profondeur - il est l’un des écrivains qui comptent le plus pour moi, et probablement le seul à savoir me faire rire à gorge déployée et pleurer à quelques phrases d’intervalle. C’était un catholique aussi naïf qu’intransigeant - jusqu’à se voir rejeté par l’Eglise elle-même, mais je ne crois pas qu’il soit nécessaire de l’être comme lui pour être viscéralement touché par des œuvres comme Le Désespéré, La Femme Pauvre ou l’incomparable Journal.

Coutumier des dérapages discriminatoires, il fait partie de ces artistes qu’on ne peut admirer sans réserve et dont l’éloquence repousse parfois autant qu’elle fascine.

Je relis souvent son extraordinaire texte « L’enthousiasme en Art », dont je partage un extrait ici :

« L'enthousiasme est un Dieu dans le cœur, et
quand le coeur en est rempli, il est irrésistiblement porté en haut de la vie et en haut du monde, infiniment au-dessus de tout ce qu'il aime, de tout ce qu'il voit et de tout ce qu'il juge, dans l'empyrée de son propre rêve intérieurement réalisé. C'est le mouvement sublime par lequel les sentiments enveloppés et sommeillant dans l'âme humaine éclatent soudainement dans la vie morale et retentissent dans tous les actes extérieurs de la vie physique. C'est une lampe ardente placée physiologiquement et psychologiquement au-dessous de la pensée, comme au-dessous d'un vase plein d'un liquide glacé et qui l'échauffe, le purifie, le colore et le subtilise sans jamais parvenir à le consumer. L'enthousiasme, enfin, est une rage de vie supérieure et un divin mécontentement des conditions inflexibles de la vie normale. Aimer n'est rien, le plus plat bourgeois en est capable, mais aimer avec enthousiasme, un héros seul le peut faire et c'est encore ce qu'on a pu trouver de plus beau sur cette sphère raboteuse où, depuis six mille ans, pâture le genre humain ! » ... Voir plusVoir moins

Lucas Debargue

2 weeks ago

#czech #ski #sky #winter #magic Already one of the best moments of my 2026 year ! ... Voir plusVoir moins

Lucas Debargue

3 weeks ago

Check out Charly Mandon’s new video : “3 dimensional encores”, involving 3 contemporary pieces (Stephane Delplace’s Septem Perpetuum, Charly’s Wutstück and my own f minor Étude in 5/4), filmed in 3D at Stephen Paulello Studio on his Opus 102 piano… It was very fun to shoot !

👇 LINKS IN COMMENTS ... Voir plusVoir moins

Lucas Debargue updated their cover photo.

1 month ago

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Lucas Debargue

2 months ago

#piano #music #recording #night ... Voir plusVoir moins

Lucas Debargue

2 months ago

CLASSICAL MUSIC IS NOT DYING: IT HAS NEVER BEEN ALIVE

>>> DISCLAIMER :
1) this piece is a critique itself : it is in many ways using common tools that what it denounces here or there. So it is VERY easy to relativise and I wrote it and shared it as an exercise for the mind, for whoever would have the patience to go through it. It is in many ways my own « exorcism ».
2) I support without reserve music lovers who write about music and musicians.
3) I developed on what I identify as an ideology, not on this or that person’s choices. It is obvious that everyone is free to do and say whatever he/she wants. Some use these rights to denigrate or insult ad personam : it is far from what I am doing here. I squeeze concepts, not people. <<<

As far as I have experienced it, it seems that « classical music » doesn’t know what to do with spontaneous invention on stage. It is either perceived as exciting but « unusual », if not inappropriate, or simply quite uncomfortable.

How did we get here?

After a wonderful series of four concerts with the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz orchestra, playing Ravel’s G-major Concerto and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, musicians of the orchestra expressed their surprise after hearing me improvise differently every night (inside and after the Gershwin). I don’t think that my improvisations have anything particularly remarkable in themselves: it’s just that I improvise deliberately, and that’s apparently enough to be addressed as something « unusual ».

This raised some thoughts in my mind about classical music ideology and practice.

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« Classical music » is a recent marketing concept that desperately tries to contain centuries of diverse musical practices, most of which have one strong thing in common: they are written. So I prefer to call it « written music » or musical literature. Calling anything from Guillaume de Machaut to Ligeti « classical » makes no sense when we think about it. It is also naturally off-putting to most people, since « classical » rhymes with clean, square order and carries, whether we like it or not, the intimidating prefix « class ».

In what we call « classical music », the text — the score — has become the alpha and omega of musical practice. Composing or improvising lies very far from the interpreter’s usual education, which pursues only two aims: mastering the instrument « technically », and being able to play the score « correctly ». Those who make a difference and reach the « top » do so either by executing a technical feat (an incredibly fast and detailed trill, or a series of rapid alternating octaves) or by performing at least one piece with extreme « correct » accuracy.

It then becomes clear that interpreters are no longer creators, but athletic engineers. They must prove their legitimacy by obtaining diplomas from prestigious musical institutions and, for a small number of them, by receiving instruction from legendary maestros and winning prizes in international competitions. What they receive is supposedly « based on merit » — even though much of it is a lottery and a game of influences.

A classical musician is expected to spend his life PRACTICING. Which means : rehearse, repeat, review, revise, reproduce, remember. A dull tragicomedy of gestures, played most of time alone in a locked room.

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Classical music is dominated by constant fear of judgment from peers and critics. It is DESIGNED to avoid real creativity, invention, spontaneity. It has established itself apart from all other musical genres, almost as an anti-musicianship that considers itself supreme musicianship — training abilities that go AGAINST improvisation and creation.

It’s not that classical musicians don’t learn to speak the musical language; it’s worse: they learn NOT to speak it. The text is absorbed to be restored exactly as it is, not as a base for transformation or variation. The interpreter is the executioner of a score read as a fixed program, and will be evaluated for the QUALITY (as for fabric) of his rendition.

The classical music field is practically entirely shaped by the relationship between a musical performance and its immediate evaluation. Musicians themselves are trained in a way that makes them become critics of their own and their colleagues’ work, practicing with critics’ parameters in mind.
Some of these main parameters are: sound, technique, posture, taste (or « style »). We still lack a rational definition of those elements, despite the urge to separate the musicians who are “in” and the ones who are “out” with them. What is a beautiful sound (what about Michelangeli’s raw Bach–Busoni Ciaccona)? A « flawless » technique (what about Cortot)? A good posture (what about Gould)? The right taste (what about Horowitz)?These parameters are empty shells that cover the arbitrary, capricious world of subjectivity. Despite not having any consistency, they have become the main guiding lines of a musician’s work. But they are so vague that the musician usually relies for a long time on a dependence on a pedagogue, who will fill these empty parameters with anything he feels inspired to, from the most academic mantra to the most esoteric metaphor.

The most striking effect classical music has on its performing servants is revealed by their bodies on stage. I’m not talking about posture or the tension in their arms and hands — I leave that to experts in technical evaluation. I’m referring instead to bodies detached from the music they play, following a restrained, awkward choreography, as if every cell were screaming, ‘Why the hell am I doing this?’
These bodies have forgotten the feeling of dancing, or the warm vibration of the voice in the chest while singing. They’re not musical bodies, but submissive and suffering enveloppes of the classical music ideology.

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Critics are not just a little bunch of harmless, frustrated amateurs. Critics are THE characteristic figures of classical music, its human final personification. They embody a major pillar of what is called “classical music”: they are the final stage in the transformation of a curious child who could have become a musician and lived a fulfilling musical life into a grumpy or unctuous (depending on mood and digestion) commentator on the works of others, without being personally involved in any kind of musicianship. It’s the last stage of the transformation of music into an abstract distraction or elite entertainment, subject to endless evaluations and comparisons.

In that ideology ruled by music criticism, which is like a genetically transformed musical organism, another important rule is that “greats cannot fail”: critics will usually praise blindly some elected “legends” despite all the slags or pedestrian things in their playing, sustaining it with bad faith. For much less than such slags, musicians whom critics decide to exclude from the elected crowd find themselves harshly blamed.
The « legends » are inaccessible, and they have zealous guardians who make sure they remain inaccessible forever.
As a consequence, musicians get infected by prejudices such as: « I have a limited career because of my limited technique », « he has an outstanding career because of his outstanding technique ». As if career depended on a “level” of musicianship. As if musicianship depended on having a career.

As it seems that anyone in classical music — from the music lover to the musician, including the teacher — can be seen as a critic, an abstract hierarchy has been created, ranging from the amateur to the « professional » virtuoso or « professional listener » (!), to give more authority to some than to others. The criteria used to place people on this scale are at the same time supposed to be objectively technical (even though they’re largely esoteric : the usual carnival of « acoustics », instrument sound and mechanic, « respect » of literal indications on a score) AND based on arbitrary and subjective credentials — a miracle of intellectual contortion, which leaves a wide dead zone for critics to decide if this or that musician « deserves » to be where he is, creating fake polemics and controversies that reinforce the hierarchy. As for any hierarchy, it is based on intimidation, and despite the adoration of supposed « competence » in classical music, it’s most of the time self-confidence that gives more authority to some than to others.

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Thus, if classical musicians get trained to become critics by pedagogues — and if any creativity has been expelled from the start — the only difference with critics is the instrumental craftsmanship. It’s the same ideology at work, just with duties divided in the end: the musician concentrates on instrumental expertise, and the critic on expressing with words an evaluation of the playing. The critic doesn’t touch the instrument; in « exchange », the musician doesn’t touch words and somehow forbids himself to express anything too strong about music. « I am so happy to play », « this is such beautiful music », « I dreamt of playing in this hall » — these are sadly the main substance of many interviews of classical musicians, where fake wonderment prevails by constantly repeating the « gratefulness of belonging to the family of musicians ».

Indeed, classical musicians aren’t supposed to express anything else than gratitude.

Sometimes a musician will share an anecdote about the life of the composer he plays — having read his biography. But that’s it, at best. No philosophy, nothing beyond strictly instrumental or score-reading statements — involving considerations on « style », of course. It’s not because of a lack of intelligence or sensitivity, but because curiosity (which cannot just be « exploring the repertoire ») has been cut at the root by the way we’re educated in classical music. We’re not supposed to talk about what we do, and going further than instrumental and score-reading comments is quickly considered a suspicious extrapolation — as if a scientist started talking about philosophy, to the consternation of his strictly scientific peers.

::::

It’s the way musicians practice and play today that brings legitimacy to critics — in addition to the latter getting bribed or boot-licked by musicians reposting their rags. I reposted critics myself: I stopped and wish to never do it again, because it feeds the classical music illness.
A critic won’t help the musical works reach more people, or anyone enjoy the masterpieces more — it’s quite the contrary. A concert critique is just the opinion of individuals sitting in the hall among hundreds of others: credit can be given to them only for doubtful reasons. They’re just tapping into a part of our human nature that delights in reading the picky judgment of someone on an experience we had or missed.
We love stories, especially when they’re told with added spices, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But when these stories are told by lazy and bitter casuists to distribute prizes or anathemas on people who commit to sharing music with audiences, it’s merely reckoning and should be addressed as such, however precious freedom of expression may be.

How could critics make a living if artists were all giving truly different interpretations and involving their own compositions and improvisations in their programs? You can only compare what looks or sounds similar enough: two coats, for instance. You can’t compare a coat to a sunflower field. This is how I would imagine concert performances: the same piece played by two different musicians, one wearing the piece like a coat and the other giving me the vision of a sunflower field when he plays.

Because artists mostly propose similar repertoires and similar interpretations of this limited repertoire, audiences are naturally encouraged to listen and comment in the same way critics do, becoming obsessed by the tiniest differences of tempo or nuances as collectors do with their trinkets. ‘Perfect’, ‘too much’, and ‘not enough’ become the main verbal translations of a classical-music experience, much like what one might say to a hairdresser about the temperature of the water before a haircut. It is about practical comfort, not about art. Discomfort is excluded as something non-artistic: within classical-music ideology, art must be pretty, clean, moderate, and distant. Anything outside this framework is rejected as impure, following patterns similar to those of eugenics.

::::

Complaints are rising about the lack of education of children and audiences, about other musical genres gaining the mainstream… But what is there to admire about what is called « classical music », this concept created only for the sake of marketing when the recording industry exploded around the 1950s? It’s obvious that the concept is irrelevant, describing a corpus of mostly written works from medieval chants to Boulez as « classical ». And yet it is indeed unified — by codes of practice and appreciation. It is the soundtrack of a certain elite, characterized by exclusion and hypocrisy: we complain that classical music isn’t popular but at the same time we don’t want it to become popular because it would « downgrade » it; we pretend that it’s for everyone but then complain that not everyone comes to the concert hall, etc. etc.

Truth hurts: « classical music » has very little to do with… music. Composition and improvisation are considered « optional » in this field — although they were totally organic practices for almost all the “great composers” we celebrate. Someone improvising a cadenza or composing his own sonata is regarded as « having a special kind of talent ». The norm is the strict interpreter, with his instrument, his score, and his wish to be technically perfect and « loyal to the composer ». But how can one be loyal to any composer without also composing and improvising? From which angle can one contemplate a score without living inside the musical language and speaking it?

Then interpretation becomes something technological: most of us use cars, computers, microwaves without understanding how they work. It is consumption. Interpreting Beethoven without getting closer to what he was facing by writing yourself is behaving as a customer of his music, not as an artist.
I don’t think this statement is too extreme. What I do find extreme is that, in classical music, someone who has played a Beethoven sonata all his life — without any of the independence from the score that improvisation and personal composition bring — is automatically considered much closer to Beethoven’s spirit than an amateur who improvises from the very same sonata. It is the consecration of the ‘specialist’, the one who supposedly knows more than others simply because he has spent ‘so much time with this repertoire’. Unfortunately, no evidence has ever shown that spending a great deal of time on a piece guarantees being more ‘on the mark’ than someone who discovers the same piece and plays it for the first time. Music is not like science or technology: a large part of it depends on sudden flashes of inspiration, as in any art form.

::::

Thinking endlessly about some signs on the score, taking composers’ or urtext misprints as final words, adjusting phrasing and dynamics meticulously — all this is perceived as very noble and as the highest form of craft in classical music. Indeed, some musicians spend much more time on Bach and Mozart scores than the composers spent themselves writing them. The only argument used to justify this imbalance is: « yes, but Bach and Mozart were geniuses, and we aren’t ». But then — where are today’s geniuses? Did genius appear only at a certain moment in history, before disappearing and leaving music in the hands of non-genius « humble servants »?

Of course, looking so closely at the same score for such a long time makes you see things in it that are probably not relevant, and miss some very relevant ones: you cannot take for granted that « practising more », for a longer time and looking more closely at details, is without cost. Then you can spend your whole life playing hundreds of sonata forms and still be totally unable to improvise a short one, despite all the time you spent on them. Is it so inappropriate to say once again that something is rather strange here?
One can always hide behind the curtain of so-called « humility »: « I give my life to the sonata forms of the greatest; why would I do mine when I am sure it wouldn’t be as good? » — but it’s rather the contrary: it’s pride and ego, a refusal to RISK not being AS GOOD as the GREATEST…

True humility would inspire one to write precisely in order to get closer to the composers one plays, without fear of being « not good », which is crippling for any creative process. It would also consider composition and improvisation as a way to understand the musical language in action. It’s quite obvious: playing hundreds of sonata forms and not being able to improvise a simple one means that, despite all the time you spent on those sonatas, you didn’t invest much time in understanding how they are made from the inside. This also comes from relying too much on the idea that “no masterpiece can be reproduced”. That’s true — but some of its musical elements can be practically understood, internalised, and reproduced, which definitely helps us feel them more deeply. Rather than reproducing the gestures of the « legendary » interpreter or the teacher, why not become able to reproduce elements combined by the composer himself to make his piece?

Masterpieces can also be transformed and practiced differently: nobody except purists will be hurt by a Chopin piece played in a Bossa Nova, Minuet, Tango, or even Funk style. And this would not be entertainment, nor just a joke — it is actually closer to what can be called “musical practice” than endlessly repeating this or that passage of a piece in order to make it « perfect » — which means, « technically clean » and in the « correct style », following some dusty artificial rules. Unfortunately, what is emphasised in classical training is mostly purely physical tools, while the part left to the mind is limited to memorising the piece and following a fixed interpretation “program.”

Classical music training and its working routine have replaced restless curiosity with bleak and dry professionalism.

So we’ll have again, and again, another set of all the Beethoven sonatas, Chopin études, Shostakovich symphonies to add to the piles of the already existing ones. Interpreters will share their excitement about « climbing those musical mountains » or « facing these repertoire monuments », as hikers would take a selfie at the top of Mont Blanc. « An indispensable addition to any collection », « a new reference », critics will write. There will be controversies about some, because of a difference as tiny as a hair between two tempi or dynamics. It will sell for a bit and then die until another one appears. So we’ll have to stick to the old « unsurpassable » « legendary » recordings that critics will regularly caress in their texts, video or radio interventions to ensure we never forget what is supposed to be considered the eternal TRUTH.

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It is very sad that words such as mine here are often considered a « groundbreaking attitude » (when they’re not simply considered uneducated, naive, or arrogant) when I or someone else shares them. Because they are neither an attitude nor groundbreaking.
– It is not an attitude, but an organic evidence: how can staying locked in an exclusive love affair with instrument and score do anything good to music, when they are only a very small part of it? Otherwise we contemplate or evaluate the mastery of handling an instrument and reading a score literally. It is not music either, but passive entertainment or some sort of endless freak-show competition using music as a means to separate, not to unite.
– It’s not groundbreaking at all, because most of the celebrated musicians were composers and improvisers. Ironically, this is what could be called « tradition », rather than some made-up « school of interpretation ». Take the violin « school »: Vivaldi, Paganini, Wieniawski, Vieuxtemps, Ysaÿe — weren’t they all composers?

My answer to the genetically transformed musical organism is rather simple. It only requires the will not to be deeply affected by judgment. Because the ideology I described above relies entirely on that: it needs the musician to be scared of judgment in order to work on him, and to atrophy in him what naturally asks to be nourished and to flourish: his creativity.

If a musician allows himself to be creative, there will ALWAYS be a ghostly voice trying to pull him back into the ranks: « you didn’t practice enough », « you should look more closely at the score », « your sixteenths aren’t even enough », « this passage CAN’T be played like this », « this is bad taste ». First, it’s good to remember that the voice you hear is not Bach’s, Beethoven’s, Chopin’s, or Ravel’s. Second, it’s actually a good sign that your playing has shifted something in someone’s mind — even negatively. This doesn’t mean you should never question yourself as a musician; on the contrary, it is only by breaking free from sterile codes and intimidating remarks that you can genuinely question your musicianship.

Interpretation isn’t meant to get rid of creativity. Why would « respect for the composer » mean wearing a chastity belt while playing?
I like to remember that if I play what’s written, it’s because I choose to do it, not because anyone told me to. And if I decide not to play exactly what’s written, that is entirely up to me. To think that playing scrupulously what’s written and nothing else prevents one from hurting the music is at best naive, at worst a blatant lie. To betray is not to change the score, but to mute the creative spirit of musicianship. By censoring yourself in order to be « just a humble vessel of music », you simply prevent yourself from being a musician.

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Music is not an exact science. It has some rational elements, but these are never detached from the meaning they serve. Better not to take the signs as if THEY were the meaning themselves.

Many pedagogues will remind their students how Chopin, Ravel and others hated to be played this or that way, using it as an argument of authority to castrate any musical overflow. They extract assertive sentences from their context as if they were eternal tablets of interpretation laws.

Music laughs at these stiff gesticulations. It will always escape from the hands of the one who wants to control it entirely. It laughs at critics lost in their onanistic comparisons of performances, at the stern pedagogues who think they can keep music on a leash, at those who believe one needs a « certificate » to be a musician, at the whole crowd that esteems instrumental expertise rather than loves the craft of speaking the musical language. It laughs at all these « humble servants » who hide their hungry egos under a veil of « respect for tradition », those who think that growing up musically relies on practice and discipline alone.

Being a classical musician, I don’t place myself outside the things I describe here. I have fallen into many of these traps and still slip back into the classical music cult at times.
But I feel a strong desire to free myself from everything related to this ideological envelope, because I can sense how deeply it harms music.

One of the few things I desire the most is to hear music’s laughter myself as often as I can, and to spread it by playing, improvising, and speaking wherever I can. The fact that this is considered « unusual » or challenging in a field besieged by etiquette does not discourage me. Quite the contrary: it convinces me to continue on my path. I might be wrong, but if that is the case, I prefer this inspiring mistake to a truth wearing inquisitor’s robes.

LD

Painting : Magritte, Le Château des Pyrénées, 1959 ... Voir plusVoir moins