I Borbone: Piemontesi Bastardi

Here is confirmation that Francesco Piemontesi belongs to a small elite: he is a pianist that other pianists go to hear. He is awesome and speculative in the A major while in the B-flat he achieves greatness without recourse to idiosyncrasy or extremes. Even in a crowded field of celebrated recordings, Piemontesi’s performances are wholly exceptional, enlightening if exhausting at every level. They are crowned by Pentatone’s beautifully natural sound.

If the arrangements of J. S. Bach by Busoni and Co. in the early 1900s were intended to make the Baroque composer’s works sound more modern, today they perhaps feel more like relics. But these are sumptuous relics, each transcription stunningly rendered by Swiss pianist Piemontesi, bringing out the grandeur of Bach’s organ works and the crystalline beauty of his music for flute and harpsichord. Piemontesi’s performance of the Italian Concerto is lithe and supple, which makes for a thrilling, addictive listen. And his bookending of this wonderful collection with Busoni’s majestic version of the monumental “Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major” for organ is an ingenious nod to the Clavier-Übung III, Bach’s masterful collection of chorale preludes. Hidden among all of this is an original work by Busoni, the startling “Toccata,” which serves to refresh the ears.

Pianist Francesco Piemontesi presents Franz Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes and Sonata in B Minor, two of the highest mountains to climb within the piano repertoire. The metaphor of climbing a mountain not only applies to the technical demands placed on the player, but also to the sublime nature of these works: colourful, poetic, lyrical, and bold in their construction. Piemontesi has taken his time before embarking on this epic journey, and the recording documents how his interpretation of these legendary works has matured over time. Unique to this album are the liner notes, written by Nike Wagner, the great-great-granddaughter of Liszt.

The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and its Music and Artistic Director Jonathan Nott continue their acclaimed series of 20th-century masterpieces on PENTATONE, together with star pianist Francesco Piemontesi, presenting piano concertos by Ravel and Schoenberg alongside Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques. Each of these composers redefined 20th-century music in a highly personal way, and the works recorded here share a connection to the United States which one would perhaps not expect right away from these European master composers. While Ravel and Schoenberg’s piano concertos provide the most original and colourful 20th-century contributions to this genre, Messiaen employs a similar scoring to express his profound reverence for nature in Oiseaux exotiques. These challenging and multifarious scores fit Piemontesi, Nott and the orchestra like a glove.