• Saturday 5 February 2011 - 17h00

Virtuoso and poet…

Here is a recital whose originality is not purposeless. It is commonplace to say that great virtuoso pianits are first identified through a simple Mozartian scale, and that their Mozartian dimension is found again in the most diabolical passages of an etude by Liszt, for instance. Ferenc Vizi reverses the usual order of things and takes a chance on the road less travelled, which can also be the most gratifying. Virtuoso shadows and sparks by Liszt and Brahms – including Liszt's Appassionata from the Transcendental Etudes, an unjustly neglected masterpiece - offer a gigantic prelude to the most solar and maybe the most perfect sonata by Mozart. Five years ago, the Romanian pianist had impressed us with his performance of the Sonatas in B flat by Mozart and in B minor by Liszt in the same spirit. Let us bet that taking the same way backwards will be even more exciting.

Théo Belaud