François-René Duchâble destroyes piano?

[chopinaninoff]

I've heard a lot of crazy crap about this guy, and I even watched a few youtube videos and interviews with him and he seems like a """perfectionist"""" but then I read.....
"in 2003, Duchâble stated that he would end his classical recital career, in protest at what he saw as the elitism of the classical music system. He had planned three concerts where in two of them, he would destroy two grand pianos, and in one, he would burn his formal concert dress. He said that he would instead tour with an electronic keyboard around France to give informal concerts.["
Is this true? Anyone know?
"Step forward François-René Duchable, a 51-year-old concert pianist. Announcing his "retirement" – while denouncing classical music as "elitist" – Duchable has said he intends to give three farewell performances at which he will, first, crash a piano into Lake Mercantour; second, set his tail-coat in flames; and third, explode a piano in mid-air "to prove that the concert is dead".

In an interview with French paper La Croix which could have come straight from the Peter Simple column, Duchable rants:

"I have had enough of sacrificing myself for one per cent of the population. The piano is a symbol of a domineering bourgeois and industrial society that must be destroyed!"

[pianowolfi]

Well it might be an example for a sort of radical counterreaction against oneself, better, against some heteronomy that took place in one's life. He has been part of that system that he then radically refused to be a part of anymore. That doesn't mean all classical music is like this. It has been like this for HIM. He had maybe never experienced anything but this elitist system. But that doesn't mean every other person who enjoys listening or playing classical music must be necessarily also a part of such a system.