Lucas Debargue — French Evening in Dubai

On 14th February, the Symphonic Middle East Festival is proud to welcome the groundbreaking young French pianist, Lucas Debargue, for a solo performance at Dubai’s Opera House. Since first coming to prominence at the 2015 Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow, where he was awarded the coveted Prize of the Moscow Music Critics’ Association, he has performed to audiences across the globe and with such luminaries as Valery Gergiev, Mikhail Pletnev, Vladimir Jurowski, Andrey Boreyko, Tugan Sokhiev, Vladimir Spivakov and Bertrand de Billy. Presenting a diverse range of repertoire including works by Bach, Schumann, Fauré and Scriabin, this concert promises to be a unique performance by one of classical music’s most celebrated young performers, and is organised by by CMDI Group and SAMIT Event Group, with the support of the European Foundation for Support of Culture (EUFSC).

Programme:

J.S. Bach

Concerto Italiano, BWV 971

R. Schumann

Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 14

--Intermission--

G. Fauré

Barcarolle No. 3 in G flat major, Op. 42

A. Scriabin

Sonata No. 4 in F sharp major, Op. 30

G. Fauré

Ballade in F sharp major, Op. 19

A. Scriabin

Fantasy in B minor, Op. 28

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.

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 Miłosz 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 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.

“Since Glenn Gould’s visit to Moscow and Van Cliburn’s victory at the Tchaikovsky Competition in the heat of the Cold War, never has a foreign pianist provoked such frenzy.”

Olivier Bellamy,
THE HUFFINGTON POST