“Francesco Piemontesi’s musicianship is both deft and searching. Here are stellar interpretations of three very different concerto-type works, ordered into a journey from easier listening to more difficult.”
Schoenberg, Messiaen & Ravel by Francesco Piemontesi, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Jonathan Nott received a 5-star review and was selected as a Concerto Choice in BBC Music Magazine September 2022 issue!
“You have to envy the citizens of Geneva, regularly able to hear music-making on this level from their resident orchestra and conductor. Add a pianist in Francesco Piemontesi’s class, and here are stellar interpretations of three very different concerto-type works, ordered into a journey from easier listening to (notionally at least) more difficult.
Ravel was so determined to avoid portentousness in his winsome G major Piano Concerto the first work heard on the disc — that it can easily sound trite in performance. Any such risk vanishes in the presence of Piemontesi’s brand of musicianship, which is at once deft and searching; a special moment is the sequence of trills decorating the melody in the first movement’s cadenza, marvellously judged to sound as if the notes are somehow gliding, rather than stepping from one to the next.
Without any compromising sense of a soft- focus paraphrase, the music is nonetheless delivered with a sureness of touch and purpose that absorbs and, as often as not, beguiles the ear.“
Review by Malcom Hayes
