“There’s a musical asterisk on French president-elect Emmanuel Macron’s bio: He is an avid amateur pianist,” writes Anastasia Tsioulcas at National Public Radio on Tuesday (5/9). “It’s a facet of his life occasionally noted in passing, as in [a] piece from the French radio network Europe 1.… Along with mentioning his abiding fondness for karaoke, Europe 1 reported that he studied piano for 10 years at the music conservatory in Amiens, where he won third prize. In an interview last month with ClassiqueNews.com, Macron said that he’d like to play again ‘as soon as I have time,’ and said that he has a particular love for the music of Robert Schumann (‘it has images and feelings that I can’t find anywhere else’) and Liszt (‘this major European, resolute modern, anchored in the great tradition—the incandescence of his Années de pèlerinage remains intact after so many years’). When he ascended to the post of economy minister in 2014, the French newspaper Le Monde claimed he had already been nicknamed the ‘Mozart of the Elysée.’ … The last time the White House had a pianist as president was when Richard Nixon was in office.”
Posted May 11, 2017
