Tchaikovsky piano competition sees self-taught Frenchman take Russia by storm

The story shifted from a political one to a musical one in unmissable style, as Ismene Brown reports

Lucas Debargue 'simply outplayed' the rest of the competition, despite starting to play later in life
Lucas Debargue 'simply outplayed' the rest of the competition, despite starting to play later in life

Of all the classical music competitions around the world, Moscow’s four-yearly Tchaikovsky international competition is the big one, the “musical Olympics”, and the most politicised. Born in high geo-political drama in 1958, as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev renounced his fearsome predecessor, Josef Stalin, the Tchaikovsky piano competition was intended to show the world that the USSR was a different place, no longer forbiddingly isolationist but welcoming.

The Soviets expected to prove that they were globally dominant in classical music: they had the best players, and the greatest schools of professional training. And yet in 1958 their panel of top judges, the Soviets’ greatest names, including composer Dmitri Shostakovich and the master pianists Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter, did not find a Russian to be the best pianist. They awarded the gold to a young American, Van Cliburn - having checked with Khrushchev that it was permitted.

The Soviet political establishment’s outrage at an alien winning what was intended to be their prize, named after their composer, was countered by the delight of the large Russian music public at hearing a Westerner play with Russian-type soul and strength. The story shifted from a political one to a musical one.

Which, fascinatingly, is what has happened again in 2015, at this year’s competition, which I’ve just attended in Moscow. The context was again one of high political tension. The renewal of the chill between Russia and the West, and the nationalistic turn recently taken by culture produced in Russia, all gave the 2015 contest an alarming shadow of the bad old days. It was not much of a surprise that President Putin attended the winners’ gala in Moscow on Thursday (sitting a few rows in front of me), so important is the Tchaikovsky competition to Russia’s cultural reputation.

President Putin at the winners' gala
President Putin at the winners' gala

President Putin at the winners' gala

And yet, as it turned out, while the shortage of Europeans and Americans was widely blamed on politics, and while indeed Russians scored big wins, what the 2015 competition is going to be remembered for is - as back in 1958 - a man from the West. A self-taught Frenchman took the Russian music establishment by storm and upended every orthodoxy in this passionate piano nation in the process.

Lucas Debargue, 24, who only began serious piano-playing at 20 after working for three years in a supermarket, turned up in Moscow last month and quite simply outplayed dozens of pianists who have been training from their early youth. His artistry, originality and technical brilliance was (and is) available for all to hear in the copious broadcasts and streams made by Medici TV (an online resource of ballet, opera and classical music performances) of all the contestants. Debargue was not expected to win once the contestants reached the final, concerto stage for he had never before played with an orchestra (again, a barely believable fact). But though the international jury placed him last and the Moscow-trained Dmitri Masleev first, the competition’s chairman, Valery Gergiev, broke protocol by having the Frenchman play in the winners’ gala on Thursday - in front of President Putin, no less.

It was a clever stroke by Gergiev, music chief of the renowned Mariinsky theatre and Russia’s most powerful musical operative. When Gergiev was appointed chairman in 2011 he announced his intention to overhaul the Tchaikovksy, giving it transparency and musical integrity.

He had a challenge ahead of him. In the 57 years since Cliburn’s win, through and after the Cold War, during which the competition had expanded to cover piano, violin, cello and voice, it had never lost its freight of politics. Despite triumphs by British pianists John Ogdon (1962), John Lill (1970), Peter Donohoe (1982) and Irishman Barry Douglas (1986), the international view persisted that there were too many Russian teachers on the juries favouring their students, and that the competition encouraged an inappropriately competitive attitude to playing - faster, louder, stronger. When Gergiev arrived he replaced teachers with performing musicians as judges, and refocused the competition as a place of opportunity, not a gladiatorial arena.

In this year’s competition it was true that most of the medals were won for Russia and Russia- friendly countries. Yet overall there was no evidence of complacency - in every area, piano, cello, violin and voice, judges cast blind verdicts in a new voting system that all expressed faith in.

The exposure the Tchaikovksy affords is immense: four concert halls in St Petersburg and Moscow are deployed every day over a fortnight as some 620 applicants are filtered through three rounds of solo and concerto performances, a huge logistical exercise which attracts near-full houses of ticket-buyers in both cities. Another 10million viewers watch all the performances via broadcasts and streams - a factor that many Russians as well as outside watchers have welcomed as an aid to understanding the juries’ value-judgements.

An excellent Mongolian baritone won the male singer gold medal, and also the $100,000 Grand Prix. Taiwanese and German violinists won the main fiddle prizes, and a Romanian cellist outplayed the Russians in perhaps the strongest of the categories. The female vocal winner, a Russian mezzo, was obviously outstanding; the piano section was solid but not extraordinary, apart from the unique Debargue.

Yet at the prizegiving Gergiev downplayed the importance of winning per se: “Don’t believe that this is either the most successful or the most disappointing moment in your musical life. We will do our utmost to provide you with opportunities and an artistic future.”

Not just words, I felt, looking at the judges, who included major figures from the Metropolitan Opera, Bayreuth and the Verbier Festival, as well as well-connected performers such as Deborah Voigt, alongside A-list Russians such as Maxim Vengerov. (Gergiev’s contacts book should be donated to the Kremlin Armoury one day as a priceless record of music’s solar system.)

For all the expressed supportiveness, backstage international agents were hovering to scoop up potential winners while cheap, and piano wars were unceasing, with four piano manufacturers vying daily to be selected for performance by the contestants. To hook a Tchaikovsky winner for his team is his goal, admitted Steinway head of artists Gerrit Glaner. “Even though we all know it’s a pianists’ competition,” he said, “it’s also Formula 1. Here are the drivers and here are the cars. We want them to pick ours.”

Ruthless - yet it was the piano delegation who provided practical consolation for the losers. “Everyone who exposes himself to judgment which is completely subjective needs our appreciation and respect,” said Glaner. “Someone says, ‘Oh, I think that was not quite intimate enough’, and two years of your work is gone in a flash. So now I take all the first round outcasts for a frustration beer, because when you’re out, you should have some kind of community around you. You can go and cry in your pillow later.”

One loser who should hopefully not be weeping behind closed doors is Debargue, a winner even though he got no prize. The Frenchman’s success is not only the triumph of his talent over experience but also of art over politics.