Shani Diluka: “Proust brought together every dimension of my identity”

On the occasion of the publication of her book Du spirituel dans l’art, et dans la musique en particulier (éditions Art3), the pianist Shani Diluka was the guest of the Rencontres des Amis de Marcel Proust at the Hôtel Littéraire Le Swann on 12 November 2026. In conversation with Jérôme Bastianelli, she talked about her career, her discovery of Proust, her album devoted to the writer’s musical world, and the links she sees between music, literature and spirituality.

Jérôme Bastianelli — Dear Shani, we have known each other for a long time: I had the pleasure of writing your portrait for Diapason in 2003, and I reread it to prepare for this evening. I began it by mentioning a princess. But at the time, it was not the Princesse de Guermantes who interested us, it was another princess, a very real one: Princess Grace of Monaco, who played a decisive role in your vocation. Could you tell us that story, and how you became a pianist?

Shani Diluka — My parents both come from Sri Lanka, but I was born in Monaco. When Princess Grace arrived in the principality, she wanted to give culture back the place it had held at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, when Monaco welcomed Diaghilev, Debussy, Ravel and so many other artists. Among other things, she set up a programme to detect musical aptitude in nursery schools. At the age of five, I was one of the ten children selected after those tests. It was rather mysterious, because my parents knew nothing at all about classical music!

So I began music at the same time as I was learning to read and write. Very young, I also composed a great deal. At around twelve, I was even better known as a composer than as a pianist. But by constantly confronting Bach, Mozart or Beethoven, I came to find their works infinitely more interesting than my own. I chose to devote myself to those great scores.

I then entered the Paris Conservatoire, where I studied in particular with Bruno Rigutto and Georges Pludermacher, and then the International Piano Foundation at Lake Como, presided over by Martha Argerich. I began recording for Mirare, before joining Warner Classics, which today allows me to distribute my recordings all over the world.

But when I stopped composing, my need to create shifted, as it were, towards writing. From the age of thirteen or fourteen, I always carried a notebook. In it I wrote poems, impressions, intuitions. I discovered Baudelaire, Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe and, of course, Proust. That habit has never left me. When I travel, writing keeps me company in the solitude of the soloist’s life, a solitude sometimes chosen, sometimes endured. The best moments are often sleepless nights in Japan, because of jet lag, or long hours on planes.

Jérôme Bastianelli — Let us come to Proust, then. How did you discover him? Was it love at first sight, or did you have to come back to him several times before truly entering his work?

Shani Diluka — I discovered him at secondary school in Monaco. We had very good literature lessons, but Proust was only touched on rather anecdotally, through a few extracts, notably the one about the madeleine. And yet I was immediately struck by the musicality of his writing. It was not only the words that moved me, but their rhythm, what happened between them.

At the time I was buying a lot of books, and the Recherche was one of the works I dreamt of reading. But it was obviously daunting, so at first I just dipped into passages. It was when I arrived in Paris, at the Conservatoire, that I found the space for concentration I needed to immerse myself in it fully.

Reading Proust became a form of meditation for me. There is something of breath, of breathing, in it, which reminded me of the way I had to approach a phrase by Bach or Mozart. I found shared concerns with rhythm and sound. And I was fascinated by that unique alliance of poetry, philosophy and literature. I loved all three deeply, and Proust brought them together.

But this discovery also answered a more personal quest. I came from two very different cultures: Monaco, with its artistic world, its ballets, its cultural life, and Sri Lanka, with its spiritual dimension and an entirely different conception of time. I was searching a little for my identity between those two worlds. Proust allowed me to bring them together. I understood that my identity was, in the end, art and music. Everything crystallised through him.

Jérôme Bastianelli — In 2022, for the centenary of Proust’s death, you released The Proust Album. How did that project come about? And how did you choose the works it contains?

Shani Diluka — Warner gave me complete freedom, which was a great stroke of luck. I could have made three volumes, there are so many works that seem to me to match the Proustian spirit. So I had to make choices. One of the central works of the album is Reynaldo Hahn’s Piano Concerto.

Jérôme Bastianelli — It is rather an unexpected choice, since the concerto was composed in 1930, several years after Proust’s death. Is it a way of suggesting that Reynaldo Hahn was still, at that time, under the influence of his friend? Or simply that you found the work particularly beautiful?

Shani Diluka — Both, but above all I believe one of Proust’s great lessons is that time does not have a merely quantifiable value. The influence he exerted on Reynaldo Hahn could live on in his music after his death, like a perfume.

We mostly know Hahn’s songs and short pieces, which can sometimes seem light, a little old-fashioned. But he was a composer of great depth. His concerto was a revelation for me. I find in it a very particular feeling of Proust’s era, a gentleness, an almost abstract poetry. The colour of the orchestra makes me think of an iridescent cloud, and the piano enters like a blessing. There is great melancholy, meticulous phrasing, long intertwining phrases, several layers of sound. All of that seems to me deeply Proustian.

It is also a fiendishly difficult work, written for Magda Tagliaferro, an exceptional virtuoso. But what is wonderful is that the difficulty must never be heard. You have to achieve an impression of fluidity, of delicacy. I was very happy to be able to record it with Hervé Niquet, who knows Reynaldo Hahn’s music admirably.

Jérôme Bastianelli — Another original feature of your album is the kind of Vinteuil sonata you imagined by bringing together three pieces by different composers. You could have chosen the famous Franck sonata, as is often done, but you preferred a much more personal construction. Why?

Shani Diluka — I believe the mystery of the Vinteuil sonata must remain intact. In a way, I think Proust did not want anyone to be able to identify that work precisely. Of course one can think of Franck, of Saint-Saëns, of Beethoven, but for me the Vinteuil sonata is a kind of musical utopia.

So I took the liberty of imagining three movements for it. The first is a nocturne by Reynaldo Hahn for violin and piano, very melancholy, which reveals an intimate side of his writing. The second is a mazurka by Eugène Ysaÿe, who frequented the salons of that period. And the third, more playful, is a piece by Cécile Chaminade transcribed by Fritz Kreisler.

I wanted to show the diversity of music that Vinteuil could evoke, but also to shine a light on figures who belonged to Proust’s cultural world. With Pierre Fouchenneret, the violinist who accompanies me, we tried to recapture the intimacy of these works. He has a rather old-fashioned sound, which moves me very much. One can imagine these pieces being played in salons, in front of a few listeners, far from our great two-thousand-seat halls.

Jérôme Bastianelli — What I also like about your choice is that these pieces are much less well known than the Franck sonata. So we can experience a kind of freshness, of surprise, comparable to Swann’s when he hears the Vinteuil sonata for the first time without knowing what music it is. There are also, in your construction, phrases that return and seem to transform themselves, like the famous “little phrase”.

Shani Diluka — Yes, I wanted to recapture the idea of a recurring theme that undergoes metamorphosis. Of course, we cannot truly reconstruct Vinteuil’s little phrase. The way Proust describes it is of extraordinary depth, almost close to Beethovenian thought, with that idea of transformation. But I was happy to introduce lesser-known works while recapturing, I hope, something of the spirit of Madame Verdurin’s salons.

Jérôme Bastianelli — You also recorded a world premiere of a work by Richard Strauss. That is another interesting choice, because Strauss is one of the composers who, along with Stravinsky in particular, bear witness to the modernity of Proust’s musical tastes. How did you discover this piece?

Shani Diluka — It is a rather extraordinary story. I was playing at the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg and Hohenems, in Austria, when the festival director suggested that I give the premiere of a work by Richard Strauss found at a flea market in Berlin, among papers that had belonged to a cousin of the composer.

I was entrusted with the manuscript, which I had to decipher with great patience. I felt a little like an archaeologist! It was very moving to discover this music that had come down through the generations.

This nocturne immediately made me think of Proust. There is something quivering, elusive, almost impressionist about it. I find in it the world of Elstir, that way of blurring the boundaries between sky and sea. It is not at all the Strauss of the great operas. It is music made of silences, of questions, of voices that intertwine as in a dialogue. So I wanted to include it on the album, with the permission of the rights holders. Curiously, I have never yet played it in France!

Jérôme Bastianelli — Listening to it, one could almost believe it was a Debussy prelude. There is that suspended writing, those sonorities forming a kind of carpet behind the melody. And indeed Debussy also has a place on your album, notably with the Rêverie. Why that piece?

Shani Diluka — Debussy obviously belongs to Proust’s sound world. But there are several Debussys, the Debussy of the early works and the more abstract Debussy of the Préludes. I chose the Rêverie because it seems to me particularly close to the Proustian spirit.

Every time I hear it, I think of a lingering perfume, of the hawthorns, of the sea, of Albertine. In the middle of the piece there is a kind of almost medieval chant, which makes me imagine a church, a bell tower.

Since childhood I have associated sounds with colours. I used to colour in my scores, and even today images are very present when I play. Proust deeply nourishes that imagination. When I play the Rêverie, I see the hawthorn path, the girls who appear like a flock of birds, the sea, the scents.

Jérôme Bastianelli — That is interesting, because the Rêverie also features in Nina Companeez’s television adaptation of the Recherche. It accompanies, in particular, a passage devoted to the narrator’s feelings for Albertine. So you are not the only one to have sensed this correspondence between Debussy and Proust’s world.

On your album you also chose two works by Fauré, another composer Proust deeply admired.

Shani Diluka — Yes, I obviously could not make a Proust album without Fauré! First I chose Les Berceaux, a song I arranged for solo piano. The poem evokes sailors leaving port, leaving behind them women and children. The music admirably conveys the rocking of the cradles, but also that of the sea, with deep melancholy.

I wanted to remove the words, beautiful though they are, so that the piano alone could express those feelings. Proust speaks of music as a language capable of letting souls communicate beyond words. This transcription was a way of returning to that idea.

But I also wanted the voice to be heard, because Fauré is one of the greatest song composers there is. So I invited Natalie Dessay to sing Le Secret, a song that is in fact mentioned in the Recherche. Its title moves me particularly: Proust’s work is itself, in my eyes, a kind of secret, something that art gradually helps us to reveal.

Jérôme Bastianelli — On your album we also find pages by Massenet, who was one of the young Proust’s favourite composers, and by Wagner. What place does Wagner occupy in your conception of Proust’s world?

Shani Diluka — Wagner is essential. What fascinates me is the way his works are built around the leitmotif, that musical idea associated with a character, a situation or a feeling, which is transformed as the drama unfolds.

That constant metamorphosis seems very close to Proust to me. In the Recherche, the characters evolve, go through the years, through suffering and disillusion, and our perception of them changes constantly. We find something comparable in Wagner’s great works.

I would actually have liked to record the Liebestod, which is in my repertoire, but I had to give up certain pieces so as not to make the album too long.

Jérôme Bastianelli — You remind me of an article that will appear in our next Bulletin Marcel Proust, on the relationship between Vinteuil and Wagner. Its author notably compares the breathing difficulties of the dying grandmother with certain musical effects of the Liebestod. It is a rather bold interpretation, which shows how numerous the correspondences can be.

Shani Diluka — I fully understand that comparison around breath and rhythm. For me, however, the Liebestod evokes above all ecstasy. Perhaps death is also a form of ecstasy...

Jérôme Bastianelli — Let us now come to your new book, Du spirituel dans l’art, et dans la musique en particulier. The title is obviously a tribute to Kandinsky. What made you want to write it?

Shani Diluka — It is indeed an entirely deliberate tribute to Kandinsky, whose book Concerning the Spiritual in Art made a deep impression on me when I arrived in Paris. In it he speaks of the invisible, of the emergence of abstraction in painting, of the moment when forms give way to colours, to materials, to another way of perceiving the world.

For me, music is by its very nature a spiritual art. I even think all art is. There is a phrase by Novalis that has stayed with me for a long time: we are closer to the invisible than to the visible. It is almost a mantra for me. And in the end, does Proust not also speak constantly of the invisible?

This book brings together texts written over some ten years. I wanted to alternate meditations on works or artists - Beethoven, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Proust - with more personal accounts devoted to masters I have met.

I was fortunate to know Alfred Brendel, Leon Fleisher and Menahem Pressler, and to work with great teachers. All of them passed on to me something that goes far beyond piano technique: a demanding standard, an integrity, a conception of art.

That transmission is very important to me. Leon Fleisher explained that what he taught came from his teacher Artur Schnabel, who himself belonged to a line going back to Liszt, Czerny and Beethoven. He felt he was passing on something that came directly from Beethoven.

Today I teach, among other places, at the École normale de musique, and I would like in turn to pass this heritage on to the younger generations. They have enormous talent, but they live in a world dominated by social media, by immediacy. It seems essential to me to remind them that music is also an inner adventure, a quest that goes far beyond mere mastery of an instrument.

Jérôme Bastianelli — Your book is made up of fairly short chapters that can be read independently of one another. You write about musicians, including Pierre Boulez, whom one did not necessarily expect to find there, about writers, painters and personal encounters. Proust is there, naturally. Did that chapter grow out of the work you had done for your album?

Shani Diluka — Yes, absolutely. I had already written the album’s booklet, but I had a great deal of other material. When I prepare a recording, it represents three or four years of work, not only at the piano but also through reading, research, the passages I underline and the thoughts I note in my notebooks.

So I took up those texts and developed them. It was essential for me that Proust should appear in this book, alongside Beethoven, Mallarmé and so many other artists who have nourished me.

You also noticed the presence of Pierre Boulez in this book. I was lucky enough to meet him and to accompany him in New York with the Ensemble intercontemporain. It was largely thanks to him that I discovered René Char, through Le Marteau sans maître, and also Paul Klee.

That is what I would like to show: music opens windows onto all the other arts. Of course you have to work at your instrument and acquire a technique. Before being an artist, you are an artisan. But what really counts is what lies behind the notes, that submerged part of the iceberg nourished by painting, literature, encounters, life itself, with its joys and its sorrows.

Jérôme Bastianelli — You give painting an important place in this book, which contains several reproductions.

Shani Diluka — Painting is an essential source of inspiration for me. I write in particular about Basquiat, whose exhibition I had discovered at the Palais de Tokyo. At first his paintings were very colourful, teeming, almost tribal. Then, at the end of the exhibition, I discovered much more pared-down works, with blue, with white, and that repeated word: Eroica. I learnt that he had discovered Beethoven shortly before his death and that these last works paid tribute to him. It overwhelmed me.

I also write about Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who particularly interests me for his relationship to sensibility, to the expression of feelings. In his day he was far more famous than his father, Johann Sebastian. Mozart and Haydn admired him deeply. He played an essential role in establishing a music that seeks to express the movements of the soul.

And that word, the soul, always brings me back to Proust. I do not know whether any other writer has gone so far in exploring it.

Jérôme Bastianelli — One might add that your book also reproduces a work by Léon Bakst connected with L’Après-midi d’un faune, which brings us back to Debussy, to the Ballets Russes and, once again, to Proust’s world, since he mentions the name of this illustrator.

Shani Diluka — I was lucky enough to discover L’Après-midi d’un faune in Nijinsky’s choreography in Monaco when I was very young. I was thirteen or fourteen, and that discovery marked me forever.

I owe a great deal to my parents, who gave me access to all these forms of art. My father, who is here tonight, is himself a poet and a painter. He was also a great chef. He passed on to me a taste for beauty, for the pleasures of the table as much as for spiritual nourishment. All of that is part of my world.

A question from the audience — What will the programme of your next album be?

Shani Diluka — It will be devoted to Bach, centred on The Art of Fugue, which is an absolutely fascinating work, almost a spiritual testament.

What particularly moves me is the last fugue, which breaks off in the middle of a phrase. We do not know whether Bach died before he could finish it, or whether he deliberately left the work unfinished. I like to imagine the second hypothesis.

In this fugue the B-A-C-H motif appears, which corresponds to the letters of his name in German musical notation. It is as if the composer were inscribing his own signature into the polyphony, before everything breaks off and silence falls.

I built this album by alternating great fugues, which seem to me almost like abstract prayers, with more human, more tender, sometimes joyful pieces. The Art of Fugue is very particular music; we do not even know exactly for which instrument Bach conceived it. Working on it is an experience of deep meditation.

The album will be called Le Cercle (The Circle), in reference to that idea of cyclical movement, of infinity, which fascinates me.

Jérôme Bastianelli — That idea of the circle naturally brings us back to the Recherche, whose end in a sense joins its beginning. And the fact that the notes B-A-C-H are the composer’s musical signature may make us think of another play on letters: septuor is almost an anagram of Proust!

Thank you again, dear Shani, for being with us this evening.