Liszt Annees de Pelerinage Suisse S 160

The church bells that he heard aged four, walking in the streets of Zurich with his parents, were the point of departure for the young Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi who still remembers this moment as a shock that violently brought home the power of music. The sonic beauty and harmonic richness in the tolling of the bells set something off in his unconscious, sparking a lifelong quest for the timbres and sonorities that he is so deft at bringing to life on his piano. At the age of five, he tried to reproduce the sound of the bells on a little toy piano; at twelve, he played Grieg's Concerto in A Minor and started to perform in public. But two years later he became aware of the limits of his technical abilities and also of the strange tensions wracking his body.

Liszt's three volumes of Annees de pelerinage are rarely recorded complete, largely because many pianists remain baffled by the dark-hued prophecy and romanticism of the third and final book. So it is particularly gratifying to welcome Lazar Berman's superb 1977 DG recordings back into the catalogue, particularly when so finely remastered on CD. Berman is hardly celebrated as the most subtle or refined of pianists, but at his greatest he combines grandeur and sensibility to a rare degree and his response to Book Three, in particular, is of the highest musical quality and poetic insight.

Adored by the world’s greatest orchestras andconductors, Nicholas Angelich was the idealchamber music partner for countless artists. Butbeyond his unique career, he was outstanding for his quality of listening, his extreme attention toothers and his total benevolence. His passing leaves a huge void that his rich discography, his recorded concerts and his many interviews for various radio stations will help to fill. Mirare wanted to commemorate him by celebrating the 20th anniversary of this recording of Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage.