For those with memories of Michel Dalberto’s triumphs in the Clara Haskil (1975) and Leeds (1978) Competitions, this most enterprising recital will come as an exhilarating surprise. Enviably elegant at Leeds in Mozart’s K503 Concerto, Dalberto also gave hints of a stylish virtuosity. Here he fulfils all expectations, playing with sufficient swagger and musical refinement to make even the most ardent operaphile wonder at Liszt’s unquenchable love of the original sources. Forever the consummate musician, he ‘possesses’ Verdi and Wagner so strongly that their music becomes an indelible Lisztian experiences.

It’s a larger-than-life quality Dalberto relishes to the hilt. He launches Rigoletto in swashbuckling style, later spicing Liszt’s flamboyance with extra harmonies and additions. His playing has all the frisson and panache of a live performance and if his novel end to Simon Boccanegra is ‘a little surprise, not an overly bad one, I hope’ it suggests his devotion to Verdi as well as his surprise at Liszt’s triumphant conclusion to a tragic opera. Zoltán Kocsis’s superb transcription of Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan provides another example of Dalberto’s artistry and his choice of the Wagner-Liszt Parsifal paraphrase gives us a fitting suggestion of Liszt’s final farewell to his Glanz, or glitter, years.

Dalberto offers up this record as a tribute to Verdi and Wagner as well as to Liszt, and, he also tells us, as compensation for being a pianist rather than a singer. His boldness and affection are complemented by a spacious acoustic and RCA’s lavish presentation includes seven photographs of the pianist.