Two Decades of Transmitting the Happiness of Making Music and Producing International Music Stars

In this interview with Michel Sogny, French pianist, composer, and the author of didactic works for piano, you get to read about the factual details surrounding his methodology, and howit has led to incredible success for the SOS Talents Foundation in the last twenty years.

What is striking about your method that makes it so special and how would you say you discovered it?

My piano teaching method has been designed to unveil the art to the learner through the musical practice of the piano. Any learner must find the art and connect with it through practice.

The ancient Greeks understood this concept well and this was why they taught music as one of the most essential disciplines in their education. Pythagoras, for example, advised his students to never go to bed without having made a few notes on the Lyre. At that time, it was believed that the practice can help to “purify the soul...”

This can be achieved only if enjoyment is associated with learning music from the very beginning of the study. And music has the power to reveal in everyone a sensitivity that they carry within themselves, by allowing it to be expressed in an original language that primarily addresses the senses. This is particularly the case for the piano – an instrument that provides this quasi-metaphysical experience of having the sensation of feeling one’s own sensitivity at the tips of one’s fingers, while embodying it in a sound. And this sensitivity can develop, it can be evaluated and it can be refined if the right teaching allows it.

It is this philosophy that has guided me throughout the development of my pedagogy. For this purpose, I composed a didactic musical work through which I am applying these principles. At first, I designed a new way to present music theory in a shorter timescale. This is a 6-hour Solfège seminar which makes it possible for the learner to read a musical notation and understand how music is written upon conclusion of the seminar. Then I composed new piano supports. The first base is constituted by the “Prolégomènes à une Eidétique musicale”

This cycle of nearly 400 pieces allows the sensitivity to move and express itself in a musical language that is reduced to its simplest expression without any obstacle.

With this method, the musical sensation can be experienced in all its possible states and forms. It evolves, develops, perfects itself in melodies, and because it is stripped of any formal complexity, it would only retain the indefinable flavor of the sensation it induces the learner. The ability to experience the musical sensation is thus methodically stimulated to transmit the emotion felt, in the sound that expresses it. We thus prepare for the training of the artist, the aim of which is to achieve a perfect match between the emotion felt and the sound that conveys it.

The second base of my teaching is constituted by the cycle of more than 300 pieces of Etudes for piano. These studies have been composed to address all the aspects necessary for mastering piano technique, classifying them, and offering them in a progressive cycle that gradually leads the student till they gain mastery of the instrument. The focus is always on the creative imagination and this is achieved by combining musical aesthetics with pedagogical effectiveness. In the long term, they allow access to technical freedom which is essential to defeating the apprehension that comes with the piano repertoire, without ever ceasing to experience the pleasure of musical interpretation throughout the learning process.

Why did you start SOS Talents Foundation?

There was a proposal for me to direct a musical institution at Villa Schindler in Austria from 1995 to 2002. Villa Schindler was chaired by Yehudi Menuhin at the time. In addition to a piano festival that I had created there, it seemed to me that this magnificent place located in the Austrian Tyrol could become a sort of Villa Medici for young pianists who would reside there. I selected the young Georgian pianist Elisso Bolkvadze with whom I undertook important piano work that allowed her to achieve the full development of her talent. Then came the young Georgians Khatia Buniatishvili, and her sister Gvantsa, Tamar Beraia, Yana Vassilieva from Russia and many others.

To make it easier to highlight these young artists that I was training, the idea came to me to create SOS Talents Foundation in 2000.

The goal is to offer children that I select, to benefit from my teaching and then participate in concerts, in different countries to make them popular by highlighting their talents. Facilitating the debut of young artists is one of the most difficult aspects for all those who are destined for an international career.

It was very valuable for the Foundation to have had the support of the Dassault family, on the initiative of Nicole Dassault who was enthusiastic about this project.

Through the support we received, the first concert of the SOS Talents Foundation was able to take place in 2001 with the young talents Khatia and Gvantsa Buniatishvili, and Yana Vassilieva. These exceptional concerts have continued since and we are celebrating our 20th anniversary this year.

It is incredible watching young talents developed by your method to be known by a large public and they are also progressing in their international careers. How do you look back on the successes achieved 20 years later?

The past twenty years have been very productive and dynamic for the Foundation. Many young talents have been trained there and have won major international prizes. SOS Talents Foundation has organized numerous concerts in different countries, some of which have been broadcast live on Mezzo TV. We have many beneficiaries of our training who are flourishing today in their international careers particularly Elisso Bolkvadze, Khatia Buniatishvili, Ana Kipiani, Anna Fedorova, Alexandra Massaleva, Tamar Beraia, etc.

Then the second generation proved to be as brilliant as the previous one, and they have been getting recognitions and winning numerous international awards too. Notable among them from Georgia are Tedo Diakonidze, Ilia Lomtatidze, Barbara Tataradze, Barbara Chkhaidze, and Lisa Megrelishvili.

Those from Lithuania include – Pijus Pirogovas, Marjika Kalenicenko, Milda Daunoraité, Morta Grigaliunité, and Kasparas Mikuzis.

To see all these young people who would probably have remained unknown without the support and the light provided by the Foundation succeed, warms my heart and encourages me to pursue what I consider to be my life’s mission.

I called it SOS Talents Foundation because it hurts my soul to know that talents could have disappeared due to the lack of a good support structure.

I think that all these young people who have passed through the Foundation, regardless of their respective destinies, will have received the most precious asset that one can possess, namely this passion for music that will never leave them and that they can still cultivate.

What are some of the projects and initiatives planned for the coming years?

In future years, I hope to be able to continue the Gala evenings at the Hotel Marcel Dassault, which is a unique opportunity for these young people to outshine themselves in a magnificent place that inspires them.

My goal is to continue to transmit the happiness of making music.

In today’s world, I think more than ever that this art has a very important role in allowing us to detach ourselves somewhat from the increasingly numerous requests that we receive. Entering this world of harmony and sensitivity is essential to regenerate and to find a creative force within yourself. Music has this power. Do not hesitate to experience its saving benefits. Long live the music and, may the music play on.