World star François Glorieux (90) gives concert in hometown
The honorary citizen of Kortrijk immediately attracted everyone with spicy anecdotes from his career and his surprising improvisations on piano.
Glorieux often thinks about his childhood in Kortrijk. “I was 5 years old. We had a piano at home. I went to the piano and I started to improvise with formidable chords, magnificent. And my father said: how is it possible, you have never taken a piano lesson. Allee François, how is is it possible? I was born with that gift. But in Kortrijk I started as an actor.”
François may have become world famous for his improvisations, Biva Bomma in the style of Bach, or the Beatles in the style of Mozart. And he’s a talkative. “Sometimes people ask me: François, how old are you actually? And then I say: you answer. And then they say: seventy. I then say: a little more.”
In any case, few pianists are allowed to play a piano concerto at this level at that age, as they did yesterday in Kortrijk.