Lucas Debargue-piano, France

Lucas Debargue-piano

“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.

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 released a new CD entirely dedicated to the Polish composer Miłosz Magin: “Zal” – 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.

Programme:

1. A. Mozart: Sonata in A minor K. 310

                                Allegro maestoso

Andante cantabile con espressione

Presto

1. Chopin: Ballade 2 in A minor op. 38                                                         

1. Chopin: Prelude in C-sharp minor op. 45                                                     

1. Chopin: Polonaise-fantasie in A flat major op. 61                               

-intermission-

1. Ravel: Gaspard de la Nuit

                                Ondine

                                Le gibet

                                Scarbo

1. Liszt: Après une lecture du Dante. Fantasia quasi Sonata