[Dixielandjazz] The Times: Duchable

[Robert S. Ringwald]

I received this from our good member and Jazz Doc Norman Vickers
nvickers1 at cox.net

While not related to OKOM (Our kind of music) directly, it does demonstrate
the fustration of a professional musician.

While this guy seems to have a screw loose, I must confess I have felt a
similar fustration at various times during my music career.

Bob (Now where'd I put that damn piano?) Ringwald
mr.wonderful at ringwald.com
Placerville, (Old Hangtown), CA USA


> The Times [London] / andante - 4 July 2003
>
>  -  French virtuoso keyboardist François-René Duchable plans to end
> his career this summer by destroying two grand pianos and burning his
> concert suit to protest what he sees as the bourgeois elitism of the
> classical music world, The Times of London reports.
>
> According to The Times, Duchable, 51, told the French Catholic newsaper
> La Croix that his life as a touring pianist has been "hell" and he
> delivered blistering parting attacks on some of his fellow musicians.
>
> Alfred Brendel's latest recording, Duchable said, is "discouragingly
> artificial."  Maurizio Pollini has "worn himself out from repeating the
> same things" and Martha Argerich has "managed to become a myth by always
> playing the same four concertos."
>
> Duchable told La Croix:  "The piano is a symbol of a certain domineering
> bourgeois and industrial society that has to be destroyed.  Used as this
> society uses it, the piano is an arrogant instrument which excludes all
> those that don't know about music."
>  The pianist says he plans to create a sensation with his final three
> concerts, according to The Times.  The first concert, scheduled for the
> end of July, will end with a piano crashing into Lake Mercantour.  The
> second will finish with his recital suit on fire and the third will
> culminate with the mid-air explosion of a grand piano to make the
> statement that "the concert is dead."
>
> After the concerts, Duchable plans to strap a portable keyboard to his
> bicycle and pedal around France giving impromptu performances, the Times
> says.
>
> "I have had enough of sacrificing my life for 1 per  cent of the
> population" Duchable said.  "I have had enough of participating in a
> musical system which, in France at least, functions badly and limits
> classical music to an elite."
>
> Duchable won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Prize in Brussels at age 16
> in 1973 and has received awards for his performances and recordings of
> Chopin, Liszt and Poulenc.
>
>
>