Presto Recording of the Week
8th June 2018

Presto Recordings of the Year
Finalist 2018

Francesco Piemontesi (piano)

Liszt: Années de pèlerinage, 1ère année, Suisse (9 pieces), S. 160
Liszt: Legendes for piano, S. 175. No. 2, St. François de Paule marchant sur les flots

"Piemontesi makes an exultant hymn of the opening ‘Chapelle de Guillaume Tell’, a noble tribute to Switzerland’s legendary hero; and his ‘Au Lac de Wallenstadt’ makes you recall Liszt’s mistress of the moment, Marie d’Agoult, as she heard ‘a melancholy harmony imitative of the sigh of waves and the cadence of oars’. He reminds you that ‘Pastorale’ is a playful tribute to the finale of Beethoven’s Pastoral Sonata, while few could equal Piemontesi’s octave blaze in ‘Orage’, an alpine, elemental rage with a vengeance. Most of all he rises to the immense challenge of ‘Valle d’Obermann with a deep and abiding sense of Byronic gloom, an awe and melancholy induced by a pantheistic sense of the wonders of nature. After such magnificence ‘Eclogue’ comes like balm, and finally in ‘Les cloches de Genève’, the bells ring out in defiance of Calvanist Geneva’s frown on Liszt and Marie d’Agoult’s scandalous and open relationship in their midst." - International Piano September 2018