Samson François

Samson Pascal François (born May 18, 1924 in Frankfurt am Main , † October 22, 1970 in Paris ) was a French pianist and composer.

Life

François had his first piano lessons in Italy with Pietro Mascagni , under whose direction he played a piano concerto by Mozart at the age of six. He then studied in Belgrade with Cyril Licar , who introduced him to the work of Béla Bartók , and from 1932 to 1935 at the Nice Conservatory. There Alfred Cortot became aware of him, who encouraged him to come to Paris to the École Normale de Musique , where François himself studied with Yvonne Lefébure and Cortot. He also had lessons in harmony with Nadia Boulanger .

In 1938 he moved to the Conservatoire de Paris , where he studied with Marguerite Long . In 1940 he completed his training with the first prize in piano. In 1943 he won the first Long Thibaud competition. From 1945 François toured all of Europe as a concert pianist, he made his debut in the USA in 1947, and in 1964 he also appeared in China.

The focus of François' repertoire was the romantic piano literature with works by Franz Liszt , Robert Schumann , Frédéric Chopin , Gabriel Fauré , Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel . In addition, he campaigned for contemporary composers such as Bartók, Prokofjew and Hindemith . He premiered his own piano concerto in 1950 at the Aix-en-Provence Festival . He also composed a. a. some film scores and a piece for jazz singer Peggy Lee .

François was, like Glenn Gould , a musical enfant terrible all his life . In the 1950s, music critics complained that his piano playing was "boisterous and tangled like his head of hair". In 2012, his Debussy recordings were recognized in the best list of the German Record Critics' Prize. In contrast to the emerging tendency towards true-to-note reproduction of works, he stood in the tradition of the piano virtuosos of the 19th century, as represented by his teacher Cortot. He shocked music lovers with the news that Brahms' piano works caused him physical discomfort and Beethoven's sonatas bored him.

François' eccentric lifestyle, his passion for nightlife and the excessive consumption of alcohol and cigarettes led to a heart attack during a performance in 1968. He died two years later at the age of 46. Samson François was buried in the Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis) cemetery.

Jérôme Spycket published his biography under the title Scarbo in 1985 , another biography from 2002 comes from his son Maximilien François .