Lucas Debargue
Biography
“The incredible gift, artistic vision and creative freedom” of Lucas Debargue was revealed by his performances at the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow in 2015 and distinguished with the coveted Prize of the Moscow Music Critics’ Association.
Today, Lucas is invited to play solo and with leading orchestras in the most prestigious venues of the world including Berlin Philharmonie, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Konzerthaus Vienna, Théâtre des Champs Elysées and Philharmonie Paris, London’s Wigmore Hall and Royal Festival Hall, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Cologne Philharmonie, Suntory Hall Tokyo, the concert halls of Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Seoul, and of course the legendary Grand Hall of Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, the Mariinsky Concert Hall in St. Petersburg and Carnegie Hall in New York. He also appeared several times at the summer festivals of La Roque d’Anthéron and Verbier.
Lucas Debargue regularly collaborates with Valery Gergiev, Mikhail Pletnev, Vladimir Jurowski, Andrey Boreyko, Tugan Sokhiev, Vladimir Spivakov and Bertrand de Billy. His chamber music partners include Gidon Kremer, Janine Jansen, and Martin Fröst.
Born in 1990, Lucas forged a highly unconventional path to success. Having discovered classical music at the age of 10, the future musician began to feed his passion and curiosity with diverse artistic and intellectual experiences, which included advanced studies of literature and philosophy. The encounter with the celebrated piano teacher Rena Shereshevskaya proved a turning point: her vision and guidance inspired Lucas to make a life-long professional commitment to music.
A performer of fierce integrity and dazzling communicative power, Lucas Debargue draws inspiration for his playing from literature, painting, cinema, jazz, and develops very personal interpretation of a carefully selected repertoire. Though the core piano repertoire is central to his career, he is keen to present works by lesser-known composers like Karol Szymanowski, Nikolai Medtner, or Milosz Magin.
Lucas devotes a large portion of his time to composition and has already created over twenty works for piano solo and chamber ensembles. These include Orpheo di camera concertino for piano, drums and string orchestra, premiered by Kremerata Baltica, and a Piano Trio was created under the auspices of the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. As a permanent guest Artist of Kremerata Baltica, Lucas has been commissioned to write a chamber opera.
Sony Classical has released five of his albums with music of Scarlatti, Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Ravel, Medtner and Szymanowski. His monumental four-volume tribute to Scarlatti, which came out at the end of 2019, has been praised by The New York Times and selected by NPR among “the ten classical albums to usher in the next decade.” In August 2021, Sony will release a new CD entirely dedicated to the Polish composer Miłosz Magin. A true discovery of a fascinating yet unknown composer recorded with Kremerata Baltica and Gidon Kremer.
Lucas’s breakthrough at the Tchaikovsky Competition is the subject of the documentary To music. Directed by Martin Mirabel and produced by Bel Air Media, it was shown at the International Film Festival in Biarritz in 2018.
Current album
Zal - The Music of Miłosz Magin
Artists Lucas DebargueRelease Date: 08/27/2021
After acclaimed recordings of music by the great masters, Lucas Debargue shines much-needed light on a composer he is determined must be heard: Miłosz Magin (1929 –1999). "Magin’s style is capable of both enchanting and surprising us," the French pianist says. "Few composers of his time were so open to cultivating the art of writing beautiful melodies." Born in Poland in 1929, Magin settled in Paris in 1960. After a car accident in 1963 he traded a career as one of Poland’s greatest pianists for that of an imaginative composer who would never forget the traditions of his homeland.
The Polish word Żal forms the album’s title. It refers to an emotion –particularly a complex and multifaceted one and is neigh-untranslatable.This single word, a single emotion with worlds of meaning, conveys for Debargue, the scent, complexity, depth, and emotion of Magin’s music. Magin’s greatest inspiration was Chopin, another Pole who made Paris his home and whose piano works Magin recorded for Decca. The two composers are buried next to one another in Paris. Magin’s music shares much of the same lucid, distilled quality as that of his forbear, as well as a pianistic elegance that speaks of France and Poland in equal measure. "His music has been resonating in my mind’s ear for the last twenty years," says Debargue, whose first piano teacher was a student of Magin and "admired him not only as an inspired composer but also as a pianist and as a teacher whose advice on interpretative matters had often proved invaluable to her. His music has played a crucial role in my life. I grew up with it," continues the French pianist.
The pieces written for children, especially Magin’s Miniature Polonaises of which he presents Nostalgie du pays, was one of the first works he learnt with his first piano teacher. When Debargue included Magin’s Nostalgie du pays at a recital in Paris, the composer’s granddaughter Alexandra contacted him. A correspondence began and a world of unpublished music saw the light of day.
Debargue’s new album, with Kremerata Baltica and Gidon Kremer, presents the composer’s rhapsodic piano concerto, combining puckish agility with magical luminosity. Kremer himself plays the Violin Concerto that frolics with Polish dances, while pianist and violinist are united for exquisite chamber works and Debargue presents gems for solo piano. This album includes world premiere recordings of the Violin Concerto, Vocalises, and Andante for Violin and Piano. It also presents the composer’s intense, prayerful Stabat mater for strings and timpani. "I already knew the sound of the Kremerata Baltica and was convinced that it would be ideal for Magin’s Stabat mater and his concertos," says Debargue.
