Biography

A performer of fierce integrity and dazzling communicative power, Lucas Debargue draws inspiration for his playing from literature, painting, cinema, and jazz. He develops very personal interpretations of a carefully selected repertory that includes works by lesser-known composers like Karol Szymanowski, Nikolai Medtner, and Miłosz Magin. Debargue’s big breakthrough came at the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition. Here he caused a sensation with his performances of Medtner’s First Sonata and Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, winning Fourth Prize and the special prize from the Moscow music critics. “Since Glenn Gould’s visit to Moscow and Van Cliburn’s victory at the Tchaikovsky Competition in the heat of the Cold War,” reported The Huffington Post, “never has a foreign pianist provoked such frenzy.” This success led to a contract with Sony Classical Records, with notable releases including the complete Scarlatti sonatas in four volumes and the complete solo piano music of Fauré. Debargue is also a composer, with nearly two dozen works to his credit, mostly chamber music that includes piano, solo piano music, and songs. As a permanent artistic partner of Kremerata Baltica, Debargue has been commissioned to write a chamber opera on the subject of assisted suicide. LMMC debut.

https://www.lucasdebargue.com/

Notes

Rachmaninoff wrote only two piano sonatas, the First in 1907, the Second in 1913. Although not especially long in minutes, the Second Sonata is big in scope and impact, embracing an enormous emotional range and approaching symphonic proportions in its textures and polyphonic complexities. The sound of heavy, pounding bells, which fascinated the composer all his life, and which found their way into so many of his scores, are evoked frequently over the course of the sonata. The three movements are played without pause, underscoring their close interrelationship. Thematic ideas are shared among the three movements, particularly motifs deriving from the drooping four-note figure first heard in the sonata’s opening gesture under a rumbling B-flat minor chord.

In addition to his artistry at the piano, Lucas Debargue is also an accomplished composer, with numerous chamber and solo piano works in his catalogue. In the latter category, one of his most recent works is the variations on the song “Summertime,” heard on this afternoon’s program. “Summertime” is probably the best-known number in Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess (1935). It is sung in full by Clara as a lullaby, shortly after the curtain goes up on Act I; fragments recur throughout the opera. The music is an evocative mix of jazz and folksong reminiscent of the Black people living in the American southeast in the early 20th century, while the words (by DuBose Heyward) have been described by Stephen Sondheim as “the best lyrics in the musical theater.” Earlier this year, CBS News included the song in its list of the 250 essential American songs of the past 250 years. There exist nearly 1,200 recordings of “Summertime” in various manifestations. Debargue’s own recording of his 20 Concert Variations was released just last month on the Sony Classical label.

When Viktor Hartmann, an artist, designer and sculptor, died of a heart attack in 1873, his close friend Modest Mussorgsky was devastated and slipped into a depression aggravated by alcoholism. Vladimir Stassov, a music critic and friend of both Mussorgsky and Hartmann, arranged an exhibit of about four hundred works of the deceased artist, hoping that this tribute might relieve Mussorgsky’s depression. Thanks to Stassov, Mussorgsky was inspired to create a suite of ten musical portraits for piano, but it did not achieve popularity in any form until Maurice Ravel orchestrated it in 1922. Each musical portrait is based on one of Hartmann’s paintings. A “Promenade” theme initiates an imaginary stroll through the picture gallery, a theme that returns several times throughout the work as the viewer moves on to another painting or group of paintings.

Robert Markow