During the Queen Elisabeth Competition 2016, a young Italian pianist aged 19 garnered a lot of attention. Alberto Ferro, already a laureate of many prizes, won the Audience Prize before winning one year later First Prize, both analytical and sensitive, served by faultless technique, this is what was so promising and it was confirmed with his first recording, devoted by the young Sicilian to Rachmaninov, one of his favourite composers. The Études-Tableaux Op. 33 were composed in 1910 in Rachmaninov’s tranquil country retreat; the others from Op. 39 date from 1916/17 and were the last pieces he wrote in Moscow, shortly before his American exile. At the time Rachmaninov was already the composer of a consequential catalogue for solo piano; the writing for ‘his’ instrument had thus attained a very high level of sophistication and subtlety adding to an incomparable understanding of the instrument’s powers of expression. The designation ‘Étude-Tableau’ is Rachmaninov’s own; close to the formal level of Chopin’s Ballades, they allow poetic interpretation even though they are entirely constructed from musical and technical ideas. The Russian master let slip very few indications concerning the precise extra-musical links that might have been at the origin of his works. He did reveal his precise sources of inspiration in letters to Respighi who orchestrated five of his miniatures; however, for the other, Rachmaninov never provided the slightest context, leaving it to the listener to work on his imagination!
The virtuosity required for these albums is far from being an end in itself, it being rather the means of expression for the feelings. These two albums are marked by the dazzling liveliness of this music: at times virile and imperious, at times subtle and discreet, yet always at the service of an astonishingly broad palette of emotions.