Lucas Debargue: To Music
Lucas Debargue (piano)
Rena Shereshevskaya (Debargue’s teacher)
David Castro-Balbi (violin); Alexandre Castro-Balbi (cello)
Martin Mirabel (film writer and director)
Filmed on location in Beauvais, Berlin, Chicago, Compiègne, Moscow, Salerno, and Weimar, October 2015-January 2017 [84:17]
Bel Air Media Production: François Duplat, Amaury LaFarge (producers)
Narrated in French with English, German, Japanese, and Korean subtitles
Bonus:
Improvisation on Duke Ellington’s Caravan, filmed on 17 June 2016, Fomenko Theatre,
Moscow, Russia [12:12]
Nikolay Medtner Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 5 (excerpt), filmed on 25 August 2016, Ravinia Festival, Illinois, USA. [14:46]
NAXOS DVD 2.110639 [111 mins]
I am of two minds about this DVD. On the one hand, I can only admire Lucas Debargue’s pianism and his obvious enthusiasm for everything he performs. One of the most delightful segments of the documentary is his take on the rags of Scott Joplin where he convincingly demonstrates how the rather mundane tune of The Entertainer can be transformed into something much more interesting by employing jazzy syncopation to give the piece bounce. Debargue has great fun with this piece by varying dynamics and using the whole keyboard to depict a solo voice, then a chorus, and finally the whole orchestra. While Debargue obviously enjoys the virtuosic aspects of performance and plays with tremendous dexterity and panache, he claims that music does not need him—he needs music. His teacher Rena Shereshevskaya states that all of her students make her happy, but Debargue is a godsend and rewards her for all she did for those who didn’t make it. Debargue himself says he doesn’t care about glorifying himself and it means nothing to him to be the “world’s best pianist.” Rather, he would prefer to be “a good person, or at least a decent one.” While music really means a lot to him, what he has done so far is “to show the people who really matter to me how much I love them.” From the documentary this would seem to mean Shereshevskaya, the Castro-Balbi brothers, and his good friend, the photographer Martin Mirabel who filmed the documentary. The latter was largely responsible for Debargue’s decision to take up the piano after a number of years of absence from the keyboard. He didn’t begin formal training as a pianist until age 20, though he had piano lessons from age 11.
The downside of the documentary is the way the film jumps around from location to location at times without adequate identification. Perhaps this is done to show how Debargue is always on the move. His energy is seemingly inexhaustible. The other failing, if that isn’t too strong a word, is the excerpts he performs, including Beethoven, Chopin, Scarlatti, Schubert, Ravel et al. These are very brief and rarely complete in themselves. Often the narrator, whether Mirabel or Debargue himself, is speaking over the music. One only wishes he would finish a piece before the film takes him elsewhere.
In addition to the Joplin and jazz in Chicago, highlights include Debargue’s collaboration with the Castro-Balbi brothers in a Haydn trio, a czardas by Vittorio Monti and, later in Debargue’s own composition for piano trio. He would seem to have a future in composing based on what I heard in that segment of the film. The trio appear to be having much fun performing together and have become close friends of Debargue. Shereshevskaya is worried that he might give up the piano for composition, but is confident that music will always be important to him. At the very beginning of the film he performs an abbreviated version of Tchaikovsky’s Valse sentimentale, Op. 51, as an encore to an orchestral concert at the July 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow where Russian president Vladimir Putin, among other “luminaries,” is shown in the audience. There are two performances of bonus material: an improvisation on Duke Ellington’s Caravan and an excerpt from Medtner’s Piano Sonata in F minor. These are played straight through without narration. While the DVD itself correctly lists the location of the two performances, the booklet has them reversed. This is rather understandable, for one assumes the Russian piece would be performed in Moscow and the American one in Chicago. In fact it is the opposite. A check on the web listing the Ravinia Festival’s programme for 25 August 2016 indeed has Debargue playing the Medtner sonata. Both bonus performances give the viewer a good idea of Debargue’s range, but I would also recommend listening to one of his CDs—the multi-disc set of Scarlatti sonatas on Sony, for example, should best demonstrate his talent. There is also a ten-minute medici.tv video from the 2017 Verbier Festival that is worth watching, where the pianist discusses in excellent English the works he is performing there.
The works Debargue performs on the main documentary are listed only at the end of the credits in barely legible type, but not in the booklet. The booklet does contain an article by Martin Mirabel describing how he first met Debargue when they were both 18 and “shared the same passion for music, literature, and the arts.” After the filming they both moved on, but continue “to see each other, as friends,” and occasionally have had the opportunity to collaborate on projects. Lucas Debargue is clearly a pianist with a bright future and one who visually also provides real enjoyment and entertainment.
Leslie Wright
