Lucas Debargue

Lucas Debargue, whose independent outlook, singular background, and at times unorthodox approach have drawn support from leading Russian conductors, first drew widespread notice through his disputed appearance at the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition; the pianist is also active as a composer. Born in Paris on October 23, 1990, he spent his childhood in Villers-sur-Coudun near Compiègne in northern France, where his father worked as a kinesiologist and his mother served as an operating-room nurse. He began studying piano at age nine, initially without a teacher, absorbing recordings and mastering notation independently; after receiving instruction from a neighborhood instructor, he abandoned the instrument at fifteen, played bass in a rock group, and enrolled in literature courses at Diderot University in Paris. Following six semesters he withdrew, resumed the piano, performed jazz at the Le Chat Noir club, and obtained a degree in piano and chamber music from the Beauvais Conservatory. Further training came from Rena Chereshevskaya at the Ruell-Malmaison Music School and the École Normale de Musique de Paris, then from Jean-François Heisser at the Conservatoire de Paris, where Debargue earned a diploma in 2015. Those sessions with Chereshevskaya prepared him specifically for the Tchaikovsky Competition, in which he finished fourth; the placement provoked debate, yet he received the Moscow Music Critics Association’s special award for creative vision and artistic freedom, and several jurors, among them pianist Boris Berezovsky, publicly dissented from the official ranking and maintained that a higher position was warranted. Festival patron Valery Gergiev responded by extending an unconventional invitation to the winners’ concert and scheduling a series of appearances at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. The Mariinsky engagements generated additional engagements first across Russia and subsequently worldwide; Debargue has performed at Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Philharmonie in Berlin, and numerous French halls. His chamber-music collaborators have included violinists Janine Jansen and Gidon Kremer as well as clarinetist Martin Fröst. Signed to Sony Classical in 2016, he had issued six albums by 2021, among them a 2019 set comprising Domenico Scarlatti’s fifty-two keyboard sonatas. In 2021, serving as permanent guest artist with Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica, he released the album Zal: The Music of Miłosz Magin. Among his own works are a Concertino for piano, string orchestra, and drums, first performed with Kremerata Baltica, a Quatuor Symphonique for piano quartet, and a Trio for piano, violin, and cello, which received its premiere in 2019 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.