Between Lise de la Salle and Franz Liszt is an affinity, one could say a love story, that has lasted for more than twenty years. For her second album, recorded in 2005 when she was only seventeen, Lise de la Salle had Franz Liszt paired with Bach. Six years later, she recorded her first all-Liszt album, a rather dark disc, where the tragic and relentless Funérailles and Après une lecture du Dante rubbed shoulders with the heartbreaking nudity of Nuages gris and Lacrymosa.

Unrolling this Ariadne’s thread once again, the French pianist now defends two of the greatest masterpieces, surprisingly complementary, of the most cosmopolitan composer of European Romanticism: the Piano Sonata in B minor, and the Réminiscences de Don Juan.

A summing up of Lisztian art, the Sonata in B minor, reserved for pianists with wrists of steel and hearts of gold, shines with a particular glow in the piano repertoire of the 19th century. Sensitive to the myriad nuances of this splendid fresco structured as an uninterrupted movement, Lise de la Salle balances here with astonishing ease the dramatic impact of Goethe’s Faust and the contemplative lyricism present in the tonal landscapes of the Années de pèlerinage.

The assiduous frequentation of the Lisztian universe will have facilitated the in-depth analysis of the Sonata, which quickly became for the pianist an integral part of her artistic persona - and yet, what a maelstrom of sounds.

The final part of the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, the Cantique d’amour, played here as an escape towards the light, introduces the Réminiscences de Don Juan, a fantasy in the form of variations which, through its overwhelming emotional power, works as an answer to the Sonata. A great admirer of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Lise de la Salle restores the nobility of this now rarely performed work.

Liszt takes up famous motifs from Mozart’s opera, in an aesthetic full of passion, in which he magnifies his striking art of contrasts and his dazzling virtuoso writing. By placing these Réminiscences as a mirror of the Sonata, Lise de la Salle gets as close as possible to Lisztian genius at the same time as she refines her art of dark atmospheres.