Francesco Piemontesi

Francesco Piemontesi – Liszt: Piano Sonata & Transcendental Etudes (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 22, 2023 · Comments off

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.

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Francesco Piemontesi – Liszt: Années de pèlerinage I, S. 160 “Suisse” & Légende No. 2 (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · May 28, 2023 · Comments off

Francesco Piemontesi i s a pianist of exceptional refinement of expression, which is allied to a consummate technical skill. Widely renowned for his interpretation of Mozart and the early Romantic repertoire, Piemontesi’s pianism and sensibility has a close affinity too with the later 19th century and 20th century repertoire of Brahms, Liszt, Dvořák, Ravel, Debussy, Bartok and beyond. Of one of his great teachers and mentors, Alfred Brendel, Piemontesi says that Brendel taught him “to love the detail of things”.

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Francesco Piemontesi – Schubert: Piano Sonatas, D. 958-960 (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · February 5, 2023 · Comments off

Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi interprets Schubert’s last three piano sonatas (D958-D960) on his PentaTone debut album, after years of engagement with these extraordinary works. These sonatas continue to fascinate pianists and listeners until this very day. They are arguably among the most existential music ever written for the piano, full of beauty and sadness, celebrating life and at the same time anticipating the composer’s untimely death. Even if Schubert was barely thirty years old when he wrote these works, they reveal the otherworldly and detached nature of what is often described as “late style”, while the music remains highly expressive and personal.

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Francesco Piemontesi – Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 25 & 26 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · February 5, 2023 · Comments off

Described as a ‘stellar Mozartian’ Francesco Piemontesi finds a perfect partner in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra whose impeccable credentials are widely acknowledged.

Franceso Piemontesi has performed Mozart extensively recently, including a critically acclaimed 2015 BBC Prom, a Mozart cycle at London’s Wigmore Hall which commenced in January 2016 and continues in 2017 and Mozart concertos with the SCO which The Herald awarded five stars.

The Swiss pianist enjoys particular insight into Mozart gaining a useful ‘love of detail’ from his teacher Alfred Brendel, who was himself renowned for his masterly interpretations of Mozart. This recording couples consecutive yet contrasting works from Mozart’s Vienna period: K. 503 represents the longest and most substantial of his concert masterpieces and K. 537 provides the soloist with an audience-pleasing cadenza.

Conductor Andrew Manze, well known as a HIP pioneer, shares Piemontesi’s approach to creating an authentic performance, making this somewhat of a Mozart dream team.

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Francesco Piemontesi – Bach Nostalghia (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · February 5, 2023 · Comments off

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.

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Daniel Müller-Schott & Francesco Piemontesi – Brahms: Sonatas Opp. 38, 78 & 99 (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · December 4, 2022 · Comments off

“The two cello sonatas by Johannes Brahms are in very stark contrast to each other. This is not solely due to the more than twenty years separating the works. Brahms had a preference for pairs of works with the same instrumentation, which he frequently composed according to the principle of contrast. In the case of the cello concertos, it is above all the character and mood of the respective pieces that describe the contrasts. In the version for cello, the Violin Sonata op. 78, one of Brahms’ finest chamber works, supplements the two original cello sonatas in a charming way.

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Francesco Piemontesi – Messiaen: Oiseaux Exotiques, Ravel: Piano Concerto in G Major, Schoenberg: Piano Concerto (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · August 31, 2022 · Comments off

Francesco Piemontesi – Messiaen: Oiseaux Exotiques, Ravel: Piano Concerto in G Major, Schoenberg: Piano Concerto (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 57:09 minutes | 1,92 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone

The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and its Music and Artistic Director Jonathan Nott continue their acclaimed series of 20th-century masterpieces, together with 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.

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