Late-blooming Pianist Lucas Debargue brings genre-crossing style to The Conrad

French pianist Luca Debargue Photo by Xiomara Bender courtesy of the La Jolla Music Society Lucas Debargue the French pianist La Jolla Music Society hosts on April has managed to build an enviable touting and recording career while ignoring majority of the accepted paths to success His Special Prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition may well the only conventional move in his career Debargue didn t take his first piano lesson until the late age of ten Deciding at fifteen he was more interested in literature he ceased playing entirely for three years At he was invited to participate in a music festival in his hometown of Compiegne France His passion for piano rekindled he accepted respected piano lecturer Rena Shereshevskaya s invitation to analysis with her at cole Normale de Musique de Paris and his unique career began Fourteen years later Debargue can look back on a career that already includes seven imaginative albums including recordings of undervalued composers like Nikolai Medtner Karol Szymanowski and Milosz Magin and performances in august venues from Carnegie Hall and Amsterdam s Concertgebouw to the Berliner Philharmonie A call with Debargue in Paris in March revealed an agreeable passionately autonomous personality with a poetic grasp of English and a freely associative mind Debargue on his initial discovery of music for example I really started because of a sudden outburst of passion towards classical music that just caught me around the age of It was one recording a Mozart piano concerto that I played on my little sound system It fully changed my life forever I became straight a drug addict with this music So I needed from the very beginning my dose One may talk about particular sort of epiphany like a meeting with beauty that was very unexpected A late-blooming former grocery-store clerk with only four years of formal piano training Debargue had to develop focus and thick skin early Obviously I don t have the classical musical background I m not born in the family of artists classical music lovers So it s not so surprising that I met a few resistance I learned to stay away from too countless comments related to my playing It was either you re an amateur or you are a genius I could not rely on this I focused more on the words of a guide But you cannot rely entirely on a guide I needed to get closer to the composers understand their language understand harmony understand how the pieces are built A lot of things are stated by the music itself I rely on the composers more than on the opinions of several critics musicologists or teachers or colleagues I had to build my own way Genre-crossing staying in his lane is not on Debargue s agenda In his teens he played bass and drums in a power trio and he briefly earned his keep playing piano accompaniment for singers in a Paris tourist bar His is not an elitist perspective As a music addict I m very happy to find beauty in any kinds of music The only criterion I would use to in fact receive a piece of music is really how much music is in there how much I vibrate together with the piece how much I react how much I am taken on a sound journey He counts the best jazz artists as several of the greatest music makers of the th century As a classical pianist I need them I need Thelonious Monk I need Charlie Parker I need Bill Evans I cannot ignore them So-called performance tradition matters about as little to Debargue as genre I don t believe so much in a tradition of playing imitating the great performers What matters the preponderance is meeting personally with a piece of music It s not only executing it s also commenting You need to get involved personally in this It necessities to expedition through you for your own emotions for your own understanding You will never get to do a great job by just imitating I don t want to hear again the same rubato in Chopin I want to discover chosen new vision Debargue respects historical masters like Glenn Gould and contemporary virtuosos like Daniil Trifonov for bucking tradition and finding their own interpretations as he has with Bach Mozart Beethoven Schubert Chopin and Liszt Even respecting scrupulously meticulously what is written on the total there is still a big space for creativity personal decision making When you play a recital you are alone with the piece on stage You have somehow to stand with your guts together with the composer and their piece If you don t believe in what you are doing if it doesn t come from a personal comment I wonder what will happen I would consistently prefer to disturb by making specific decisions in my interpretation that are maybe not the tradition I would not do this for the sake of a provocation but just because I need to believe in what I m doing You have to create to find tools to fall in love with any single note of the piece In La Jolla besides works by Ravel and Scriabin Debargue will perform five varied pieces by compatriot Gabriel Faure a composer he reveres so deeply he recorded his entire solo piano output pieces across four discs last year For extra sonority Debargue recorded it on a -key Paulello Opus piano he ll use one of The Conrad s Steinway concert grands April The recording on Sony Classics is an eye-opening tour de force Last year also saw Debargue compose his virtuosic Suite en r mineur which will follow the Faure on April Inspired by Baroque dance suites and firmly anchored in counterpoint it nevertheless pushes the envelope Though a minuet it s so particularly aggressive that Debargue dubbed it a War Minuet And notwithstanding its Baroque foundation Debargue admits the suite encompasses multiple styles and genres Classical Romantic Modern and even subtle hints of jazz pop and rock Atypically Debargue s twenty-odd compositions which include a concertino a piano quartet and piano trio are not late-career affectations As soon as I started to play music I started to compose I was fascinated by this alphabet of music to write sounds on a page of paper I ve written a lot of chamber music and solo piano and a bit of songs also I know all of it by heart and it s very crucial for me to constantly have it in the fingers Composition is kind of making love a love story between inspiration and craftsmanship that gives birth to something solid that can live its own life that can walk on its legs Yet Debargue contends he takes little personal pride in his creations I m very happy when I m playing my pieces with musicians and sometimes they say Oh this is not sounding so well This is not technically so settled I am very happy to change my total For me it s really everything for the sake of music Paul S Bodine has been writing about music from classical to pop rock for over years for publications such as Classical Voice North America Times of San Diego Orange County Register and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Among the artists he s interviewed are Joshua Bell Herbert Blomstedt Sarah Chang Ivan Fischer Bruno Canino Christopher O Reilly Lindsay String Quartet and Paul Chihara