Francesco’s latest recording is released on double CD and DVD by Orfeo on 13 April. The album features Liszt’s “Première année: Suisse” from Années de pèlerinage and Deux Légende: St. François de Paule marchant sur les flots, combined with a documentary by French filmmaker Bruno Monsaingeon.
The Années de pèlerinage are widely considered to be among Liszt’s great works. The title refers to Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years and Liszt clearly places the work in line with the Romantic literature of his time, prefacing most pieces with a literary passage from writers such as Schiller, Byron or Senancour. In an introduction to the complete work, Liszt wrote:
“Having recently travelled to many new countries, through different settings and places consecrated by history and poetry; having felt that the phenomena of nature and their attendant sights did not pass before my eyes as pointless images but stirred deep emotions in my soul, and that between us a vague but immediate relationship had established itself, an undefined but real rapport, an inexplicable but undeniable communication, I have tried to portray in music a few of my strongest sensations and most lively impressions.”
Click here to watch a preview of Monsaingeon’s documentary below.
The album is released in the UK on 1 June 2018.