NEWS

Lucas Debargue

2 months ago

Lucas' interview in German magazine PIANONews
www.pianonews.de/
Some quotes:
In 2016, Debargue said he is on a spiritual journey that is centred on piano playing. Is that still the case? "It's still like that, but new elements have been added. I'm devoting more and more time to composing, writing more and more, and studying the scores of old masters to learn and understand more”

“It is very important for me to devote a lot of time to the main repertoire - Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin but I also feel the need to support different music, which is less known.”

“While composing, the most important are the themes. They come to my mind quickly. Then I look for harmonies that suit them. It takes time because it must be a concentrate on all the possibilities I like. Then I must “build a house” from all these elements. It is a big stress because I have to concentrate to the maximum.”

“The style of my works is not experimental. I don’t feel the need to leave tonal system. I also think I haven't found my style yet. It is a process that evolves with each new work."


About piano music. “I have written some pieces, which I used many times as encores. They work pretty well because they are virtuosic works. But I still try to write larger forms on my instrument.”

When it is found that his music is similar to one and the other, he says: “This cannot be avoided, especially if you are writing in a tonal system. Anyone can find that this or that passage sounds like one or another composer. In the case of atonal music, again, it is found to sound like no one else's. I don't think it's such a big deal, because everyone inevitably hears what is closest and most familiar to them.”

Is he planning to leave the piano playing because of composing? “Of course not, I'll stay. Everything is in the process of development. I'm trying to develop my composing skills, but I must be patient. I don’t want to force anything. On the other hand, I can be free and do not necessarily have to write to order. So, I'm very happy to be a concert pianist. But of course, I would be happy in the future if my works were played.”

About music life in covid times.
“I will never forget that in the most difficult covid times when many people did not know how to live, I could still give concerts in Russia. That’s why it is very important for me to give everything, to take responsibility, to give special moments to the audience.
In the 1980s, there was a generation where musicians behaved like princes and princesses, the stars with a lot of money, having a jet-set lifestyle. Now are the other times, everything is harder in the music business. We cannot behave like the musicians of those times. We must not forget the main thing of our art: it is communication with the audience, responsibility for the repertoire and that we should play also lesser-known repertoire.
We must also feel responsible for the planet. Maybe we don't have to travel that much around the world.”
www.pianonews.de/ ... See MoreSee Less

PIANONews - Magazin für Klavier und Flügel

www.pianonews.de

PIANONews - Magazin für Klavier & Flügel. PIANONews entstand aus der Liebe zum Klavier und der Musik für dieses Instrument. Carsten Dürer gründete das Magazin.

Lucas Debargue

2 months ago

👉Today, Lucas is replacing Alexandra Dovgan at the opening concert of the festival "Pianomania" in Lisbon Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. The concert is also transmitted by Arte. Starting time : 20:00 CET
You can follow it here: www.arte.tv/fr/videos/105625-001-A/passion-piano-lucas-debargue-recital/
Program: Fauré Barcarolle No. 3 in G-flat major, op. 42, Ravel
Sonatine, Fauré Ballade in F-sharp major, op. 19, Ravel Gaspard de la nuit, Fauré Barcarolle No. 4 in A-flat major, op. 44.
gulbenkian.pt/en/agenda/alexandra-dovgan ... See MoreSee Less

PASSION PIANO Lucas Debargue Récital - Regarder le programme complet | ARTE Concert

www.arte.tv

Le pianiste Lucas Debargue est la révélation de l’édition 2015 du Concours Tchaïkovski, progressant au fil des épreuves du statut d’outsider à celui de favori de la critique.

Lucas Debargue

2 months ago

Review of Lucas’ recital in Accademia Filarmonica di Verona.
www.apemusicale.it/joomla/recensioni/59-concerti-2021/12387-verona-concerto-debargue-27-09-2021?f...

English resume:
You can’t ask anything better after Lucas Debargue's recital in Verona, which combined rigorous analytical musicological thinking with the mercurial magnetism of artistic freedom between Bach and Schumann, Fauré and Skrjabin.
The sequence of the pieces is already a vector of meaning, the form and sound architecture what is later principal in details of structure: In Schumann, whose counterpoint even has ties to the singing part of Bach, overlapping by sound levels and layering of voices; with entrances of guiding themes found in binomial Fauré-Skrjabin. It was the uninterrupted musical flow, to highlight the similarities between them, the poetic gesture, which crosses the different works in one and the same expressive aura.
How did Debargue’s Bach sound? It's in the same direction of his remarkable Scarlatti album from year 2019, in which the clarity of the lines stands out against agogic freedom which, far from being arbitrary, offers small deviations and hints on rubato.
In Adagio, the notes of forte and piano were follower in melody and bass without interfering harmonic pulsation. The Finale, a fusion of German constructivism and the Italian singing tradition with historical connotations that link to current time, the pianist had some well-dosed resonance pedalling, necessary for the huge hall.
No mechanistic tries, absurd attempt to re-create the harpsichord sound: if it must be a piano, it must be so thoroughly by exploiting the resources of the different instruments.
The symphonic Schumann op. 14, showed in the hands of Debargue great romantic gesture.
The sounds were grandiose, the incredible variety of dynamics have built a monument that perfectly met the intentions of the composer. Debargue's ability to phrase, to perceive different nuances, to vary semi-phrases is amazing: he proposed the timbre palette of Schumann's chromatisms, with its syncope-based dissonances and the resulting harmonic ambiguities. Everything was performed with amazing virtuosity and vigour, and even more - here appeared again the pianist/musicologist. All this paved the way for Fauré in the second part of the recital.
Fauré and Scriabin are masters of synthetic articulation in superimposed sound layers. As mentioned above, this is the key to Debargue's interpretation. It’s deep in idea, in its almost spasmodic tension – about that pianist wanted to talk with us.
Jean-François Nectoux in his Fauré monography has shown that Fauré is an absolute master at composing for piano while to combine fragmented sound spaces. Debargue turned it into the glowing sound matter, performed it again with freedom of expression, with a bold imagination in dosing dynamics and pedal so that the cantabile of the 3rd Barcarolle, has become a sway, sometimes gentle, sometimes dramatic, always extremely soft and constantly changing.
In the turbulent giant arpeggios of Scriabin's Fantasie, it was a certain emphasis that Debargue did not avoid but rather claimed that it extended the loudness to the possible extremes of the instrument. It was not an exaggeration, it was Scriabin in his writing and in his superhuman tension, which the French pianist equally restored in Sonata no. 4 - a dream or delirium in a dematerialized world, where perhaps only the thematic return of the beginning is the guarantor of the classical order.

With Debargue, the transcendental technical capability becomes a musical speech, the idea of aesthetics, total extroversion, singing, space and time relived in the sound body of the instrument, total immersion in music, to find common tension lines between the composers. You can’t ask for better. ... See MoreSee Less

Verona, concerto Debargue, 27/09/2021

www.apemusicale.it

Non si può chiedere di meglio dopo il recital veronese di Lucas Debargue, che coniuga un rigoroso taglio analitico musicologico con il duende mercuriale della libertà artistica, fra Bach e Schumann,...