Pedro Lilienfeld

In my autobiography I mentioned, very briefly, Lucette Descaves as being the second wife of Louis Fourestier, who married her shortly after my grandmother Dola passed on at age 92. He was then 75 and Lucette, 61. She was quite a remarkable person and merits far more than a mere mention in my memoirs. She was, after all, my step-grandmother, having married my step-grandfather.

Lucette Descaves was the daughter of the police commissioner of Paris, Eugène Descaves, a patron of the arts in the early 1900s. She was the goddaughter of Camile Saint-Saëns. Lucette entered the Paris Conservatoire, while Gabriel Fauré was the director, in the class of
Marguerite Long. She won first prize for piano at age 17. During WWII she taught 15-year old student Michel Legrand who in 1988 asked her to appear in his autobiographical film Cinq Jours en Juin.

Lucette has performed many works that have been recorded, and premiered several of them. She had a career as a concert soloist, performing under conductors such as Charles Münch and André Cluytens. Lucette performed Sergei Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto before the composer in 1931. In 1941, she was made a piano professor at the Conservatoire. She taught several world-renowned pianists such as Jean-Ives Thibaudet, Pascal Rogé, Katia and Marielle Labèque, and others.

Lucette wrote a book entitled Un Nouvel Art du Piano which was published in 1990. It is an outstanding work of musical pedagogy whose objective was to be a comprehensive guide for learning and teaching to play the piano. This book illustrates Lucette’s remarkable knowledge of all the composers who wrote for that instrument. Her index of these artists covers some 700 names about whose music she advises the student.

Several major artists of the early 20th century dedicated paintings to Lucette, among which I remember a Picasso drawing of a harlequin.

Louis Fourestier and Lucette visited us in Lexington in the early 70s. He died in 1976 from stomach cancer. Lucette then lived alone in the Fourestiers’ house in Boulogne, until her death in 1993. Evelyn and I visited her several times in the late 80s and early 90s. She was a very kind and warm person and invited us to nice Parisian restaurants, like the Jules Verne on the Eiffel tower, La Marée, Maxims and others. She was always impeccably dressed and behaved like a grande dame, however, without any pretensions. She had become famous but always remained humble.