PHANTASMAGORIA

Lise De La Salle and Franz Liszt have had an affinity for more than twenty years, you could even say a love story that continues to this day. For her second album, which she recorded in 2005 at the age of seventeen, she combined him with Bach. Six years later she recorded her first pure Liszt album, a dark-hued programme in which the tragic and pitiless Funérailles and Après une lecture du Dante came together with Nuages gris and Lacrymosa.

Now, with the Pianosonate in B mineur, Cantique d'amour and Réminiscences de Don Juan, the French pianist brings together two of the greatest masterworks of the most cosmopolitan of all European Romantic composers, which complement each other remarkably well. The Sonate in B mineur, which is a kind of summary of Liszt's art, shines with a special lustre in the 19th-century piano repertoire, while Liszt in the Réminiscences de Don Juan incorporates famous motives from Mozart's opera into an aesthetic full of passion that reflects his art of contrasts and dizzying virtuosity. Lise De La Salle comes as close as possible to the genius of Liszt, in particular by refining her art of dark atmospheres.