The complete Années de pèlerinage on Naïve by Bertrand Chamayou, from Toulouse, is among the finest of the many Liszt recordings that have appeared in the past couple of years. Chamayou’s virtuosity and oneness with his instrument are a given; the sense of an immensely powerful musical sensibility at work is strikingly pervasive. Chamayou plays the piano like a great conductor leads an expert orchestra. Unblemished by obtrusions of ego or exhibitionism, what we hear seems a pure distillation of musical thought, an unadorned essence of poetic utterance. When Chamayou plays, you believe every note. © 2012 Fanfare

[Bertrand Chamayou's] technique…knows no bounds…He has a composer’s ear for harmony—his performance of ‘Vallée d’Obermann’ demonstrates just how innovative Liszt’s harmonies could be, and just how important they are toward sustaining the musical interest of his works.

Chamayou…employs rubato sparingly but expressively in ‘Sonetto 47 del Petrarca’…Naive’s sound is crystalline…In sum, Chamayou’s release is a welcome and expert contribution to the Liszt bicentennial. © 2012 American Record Guide Read complete review on American Record Guide online

Here, like some valedictory blessing on the Liszt year, are tributes that would surely have brought tears of gratitude from the composer himself on hearing his genius so ardently celebrated and confirmed rather than ridiculed. Bertrand Chamayou, who gives us a complete Années de pèlerinage, is a young French pianist of an impeccable pedigree and one to make even the finest Lisztians look to their laurels. Hear him in the three Petrarch Sonnets, where a soaring sense of ecstasy is complemented by blazing eruptions of passion, everything engulfed as it were in restless and romantic enquiry. His ‘Dante’ Sonata brims over with a virtuoso savagery that dazzles and astounds (its whirling rhetoric emerging from a sulphurous pedal haze; a deeply imaginative touch) and yet even when muscles bulge and ripple with everything played to the hilt there is an added moving and confiding repose in the central dolcissimo con amore. There are further wonders in Venezia e Napoli, that garland of encores, an elemental octave uproar in ‘Orage’ and a shimmering tonal magic in ‘Au bord d’une source’ (both from Book 1, Switzerland). © 2012 Gramophone Read complete review on Gramophone
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