This 34-year-old French musician’s refreshing, even startling artistry sometimes reminded me of the old story of the bumblebee that according to aerodynamics shouldn’t be able to fly. It shouldn’t work, yet he makes it convincing. Even the odd juxtaposition of Fauré, Beethoven and Chopin (both halves of the concert offered the same three) became a kind of Heston Blumenthal approach, the unusual contrasts casting new perspective on even the most familiar pieces.
The performance was mesmerising (Photo: Darius Weinberg/Wigmore Hall)
He seemed a less natural Beethovenian, with a slightly anxious-sounding account of the two-movement Sonata Op. 90 in the first half. And in the second – well, no conventional pianist would get away with playing the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 27 No. 2, the “Moonlight”, quite so slowly. Yet Debargue managed to sustain atmosphere and melody alike and to fill them with genuine feeling. The central movement was a brief shaft of sunlight before the bristlingly explosive finale; and the whole interpretation certainly fulfilled Beethoven’s subtitle, “quasi una fantasia” (like a fantasy).
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Debargue’s trump card is that he is also a composer and, indeed, an improviser. As encores he presented his own adaptations of more Fauré: first a transcription of the song “Après un rêve”, and then a “paraphrase” of the chorale gem Cantique de Jean Racine. Again, there’s that bumblebee: Lisztian virtuoso pianism would seem an unlikely match for Fauré’s demure perfectionism, yet inexplicably it worked.
A bit Marmite? Find me any genuinely creative musician who is not. Debargue, to my ears, is the real deal.
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