François-René Duchâble

François -René Duchâble ( born April 22, 1952 in Paris ) is a French pianist.

Life

François -René Duchâble began as a four year old to play the piano and was first taught by his father. Until the beginning of the study of violinist Joseph Calvet took over this task. 1964, with only thirteen, Duchâble went to the Paris Conservatory and studied with Joseph Benvenuti and Madeleine Giraudeau Bassett. After only six months, where he won the first prize in piano. He was a finalist at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 1968, in 1969 he won a silver medal at the Long - Thibaud Competition in Paris. The first prize in 1970, he finished his studies in harmony and counterpoint in 1971.

After his military service, he began intensive to a concert and spent a year studying conducting with Robert blot next to it. In 1973 he was awarded a scholarship that enabled him to an international career. Here, Arthur Rubinstein became aware of him and supported him later. In 1980 he played with the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Herbert von Karajan Bartok's third piano concerto.

He played at many music festivals, played with other major orchestras and as a chamber music partner of straight Caussé and Paul Meyer. His recording of the concert paraphrases and transcriptions of Franz Liszt in 1995 won the national Victoires de la Musique Classique In 1996 and 1997 he was elected instrumental soloists of the year.

The preliminary end of his career as an internationally recognized star pianist turned out to be as unusual as sensational and remembered in some detail about Glenn Gould. First, he announced in 1998 that they wanted to say goodbye to 50 years from the concert business in order to break new ground and present music differently than before.

On July 25, 2003, he staged this farewell to medial spectacular way: With the help of a helicopter he had a wing in the Colmiane - Bergesee in the National Park of Mercantour sink and said, from now on only for outsiders, at the Tour de France and on the Mont to want to play Blanc. This symbolic action in the French Alps caused international sensation; The mirror as she commented in a long article, and ARTE dedicated to the " dedicated " pianists a portrait. Therein he was critical of values ​​such as success, fame and money that would be preferred in society. Important are the quality of private life, relationships, honesty and truth. He wanted to undermine his music the social hierarchy and could a system is unacceptable, in which 98 percent of the population are excluded from classical music. important than his international career it was to in a council estate or in a hospital play. music should not degenerate into a commodity.

Since then Duchâble occurs only rarely and away the rejected him "Classic mode " to play as "Ambassadors of Music " for children and charities.

Repertoire

While Duchâble at the beginning of his career focused on the triumvirate of romantic piano music of Chopin, Liszt, Robert Schumann, as well as Brahms and several recordings presented, he supplemented his repertoire later to standard works by Joseph Haydn, Beethoven to Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Poulenc and Gershwin. Some more remote works by Dukas and d' Indy, chamber music by Max Bruch, Hummel and Reinecke were also recorded as own Bach arrangements

Sonically, he is close to his patron Rubinstein. Saint- Saëns sounds elegant, sparkling, Schumann he plays stormy and enthusiastic, knows the mentally fragile dramas with thoughtful rubato and rhythmic sophistication trace. His Chopin is unsentimental and stylish. The big Studies op 10 and 25 are confidently handled and brilliantly worked out in detail, if sometimes a bit too dry and undramatic, musically restrained. The Polonaises he plays with wit and ease of moving, sometimes slipping into sporty Saloppe.

Technically, sure it can handle the challenges of the Etudes d' exécution transcendante, which are among his best performances. Beethoven concertos and sonatas succeed sometimes more compelling than his mentor.

Klaus Bennert emphasizes that Duchâble long time have not been considered outstanding virtuoso; the phase of the voluntary renunciation of overseas tours (before his retirement ) have finally made ​​him a performer personality that one could admire in Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata, as well as with the great works of Chopin and Liszt.