Behzod Abduraimov‘s performances combine great musical depth with phenomenal technique: ‘He has a magical touch,’ wrote The Times. Inferno is yet another illustration of his many talents.

It begins with variations by Carl Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven and a teacher of Liszt. Next, the famous Après une lecture de Dante (whose title is borrowed from a poem by Victor Hugo) represents Liszt’s Année de pèlerinage en Italie (1846-1849). Another era, another poetic inspiration (Verlaine), with the Suite Bergamasque, an allusion to the festivals of the Lombard commedia dell’arte, which Debussy composed between 1890 and 1905.

Still celebrating, this time in Saint Petersburg, with ‘its crowds, its shacks and its small traditional theatre, the character of the magician and conjurer… and the animation of the dolls, Petrushka, his rival and the ballerina’, notes Stravinsky, who in 1921 wrote a piano transcription of his ballet Petrushka, composed ten years earlier. Brahms and a peaceful Intermezzo from his Klavierstücke Op. 119 conclude this infernal programme.

Behzod Abduraimov, Piano