Lucas Debargue shines much-needed light on a composer with whose music he grew up and is determined must be heard: French-Polish composer Miłosz Magin (1929-1999). “Magin’s style is capable of both enchanting and surprising us,” says Lucas Debargue. “Few composers of his time were so open to cultivating the art of writing beautiful melodies.”

Born in Poland in 1929, Magin settled in Paris in 1960. After a car accident in 1963 he traded a career as one of Poland’s greatest pianists for that of an imaginative composer who would never forget the traditions of his homeland. Żal, the Polish word that forms the album’s title, refers to an emotion – particularly a complex and multifaceted one. This “single word with worlds of meaning” conveys, for Debargue, the scent, complexity, depth and emotion of Magin’s music.

Lucas Debargue’s work has been described as “a kind of genius” by Pianist Magazine and he as “fantastically gifted” by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. A globally celebrated pianist, Debargue was awarded fourth prize at the 2015 XV International Tchaikovsky Competition. Since then, he has played solo recitals and concerto engagements at such renowned venues as the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Wigmore Hall and Royal Festival Hall in London, the Berlin Philharmonie and Carnegie Hall in New York. In 2017 he was awarded the ECHO Klassik, Germany’s major classical music prize.

“Magin’s works were among the first ones that I learnt to play, alongside others by Mozart, Clementi and Beethoven. This music has been resonating in my mind’s ear for the last twenty years and has played a crucial role in my life both as a performer and as a composer” – Lucas Debargue