Piemontesi’s pianism can hold its own alongside anyone’s in terms of absolute technical facility. He also has a special affinity with the lyrical directness in Liszt’s idiom…You can’t really play ‘Au lac de Wallenstadt’ more straightforwardly than here; yet the result has a haunting loveliness…If Piemontesi’s way with the music’s poetry is special, he is less impressive with its firepower.

Piemontesi makes an exultant hymn of the opening ‘Chapelle de Guillaume Tell’, a noble tribute to Switzerland’s legendary hero; and his ‘Au Lac de Wallenstadt’ makes you recall Liszt’s mistress of the moment, Marie d’Agoult, as she heard ‘a melancholy harmony imitative of the sigh of waves and the cadence of oars’. He reminds you that ‘Pastorale’ is a playful tribute to the finale of Beethoven’s Pastoral Sonata, while few could equal Piemontesi’s octave blaze in ‘Orage’, an alpine, elemental rage with a vengeance. Most of all he rises to the immense challenge of ‘Valle d’Obermann with a deep and abiding sense of Byronic gloom, an awe and melancholy induced by a pantheistic sense of the wonders of nature. After such magnificence ‘Eclogue’ comes like balm, and finally in ‘Les cloches de Genève’, the bells ring out in defiance of Calvanist Geneva’s frown on Liszt and Marie d’Agoult’s scandalous and open relationship in their midst.

It is in movements such as 'Orage' where Piemontesi's virtuosity is on full display...Even within this maelstrom of tempest-tossed chords, he takes care to observe all the markings...This is extremely invigorating to listen to; I can’t think of many other recordings that approach this level of turbulent frenzy…[in Vallée d'Obermann] the way that Piemontesi shifts between torrid virtuosity and a delicately expressive touch is most impressive.

Piemontesi is unfazed by the technical demands and delights in the pictorial aspects of Liszt’s wanderings through his homeland. The lilting sixths of Pastorale recall the composer’s love of Italian bel canto, while Piemontesi “sings” the melodies of the Vallée d’Obermann with beguiling sensibility and revels in the sunny tintinnabulation of Les Cloches de Genève.

Here is a pianist who combines virtuosity with refined thinking… Piemontesi never vulgarizes the music or plays to the gallery He is a musician through and through.