Giuseppe Albanese
Après une lecture de Liszt

After reviewing an album that drags the listener into the sewer of music, here I am finally to review an absolutely spectacular record. Après une lecture de Liszt is one of the albums by the Calabrian pianist Giuseppe Albanese; and it deserves all the possible and imaginable attention because we are dealing with a pianist who knows how to speak the language of emotions, because this is one of the few essentials when it comes to music; if you talk about music and do not bring emotions into it, you are most likely (indeed certainly) not talking about music, but just about hot air. Let's really get into the heart of the matter because I've had enough of writing bland stuff without really getting to the core of the matter: if you don't know what it means to be moved while listening to music, listen to this record. Après une lecture de Liszt indeed is a whirlwind of emotions that one would never want to stop drinking from. In this record, all this happens from the first track to the last, passing through the grand and colossal Fantasia quasi Sonata Après une lecture de Dante, a truly incredible piece lasting sixteen minutes and thirteen seconds that I've already had the honor to listen to, along with the complete Ballads of Chopin and the complete piano and orchestra concertos of Beethoven, when I was in high school, within the context of a concert at the small hall of the Municipal Theater of my city. It was a truly spectacular performance, of which I have a very vague memory, but I remember that piece impressed me a lot. This album closes with a truly spectacular piece: Rémiscences de Norma: it is the fantasia that Liszt composed based on original themes from the opera Norma, one of the masterpieces of the Catanese opera composer Vincenzo Bellini.