Vittorio Bresciani pianist

Vittorio Bresciani and Francesco Nicolosi formed the FRANZ LISZT PIANO DUO in 1998 with the aim of promoting Liszt's symphonic work through the composer's own transcriptions for two pianos. Both pianists studied under Vincenzo Vitale, whose interest in Liszt's music and the virtuoso 19th-century piano repertoire they long shared. The work of Liszt and Thalberg is central to their respective solo careers and the duo arose as a natural consequence of that affinity. The project began with the Goethe-inspired "Faust-Symphonie", Liszt's most significant work and a perfect vehicle for celebrating the 250th anniversary (1999) of the great German poet's birth, and continued with the second great Lisztian symphony, the "Dante-Symphonie" after the Divine Comedy.

In the years from 1999 to 2007 the two pianists performed at many of Italy's leading concert venues, including the Teatro alla Scala of Milan, the Ravenna Festival, the Teatro dell'Opera of Rome, the Arena of Verona, the Settembre Musica 2004 of Turin, the Istituzione Universitaria dei Concerti of Rome, the Teatro Bellini of Catania, the Ravello Festival of Music, the Teatro Politeama of Palermo, the Gustav Mahler Musikwochen of Toblach in Südtirol, the Teatro Lirico of Cagliari, the Teatro Vittorio Emanuele of Messina, etc. The duo also made its U.S. debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. (a concert that was broadcast live on the internet), and in Germany at the Kunstfest of Weimar 2004.

For the Dante-Symphonie Bresciani and Nicolosi have conceived a multimedial project (as contemplated by Liszt himself), thereby aiming to enrich the traditional concert format with a new idiom. In this venture Liszt's music is combined with the projection of images based on Gustav Doré's illustrations elaborated by computer graphic and the recitation of passages from Dante's poem during the music in the form of 'melodrama'. The event was first performed in July 2002 as a production of Ravenna Festival, and in the following years featured by many Italian opera houses in collaboration with such Choirs as the Choir of Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Choir of Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, Choir of Teatro San Carlo di Napoli, Choir of Teatro Regio di Torino, Choir of Arena di Verona etc., with many famous actors. A new, digital-video version of this project has been debuted in the 2006-2007 season and toured among many major venues, including Teatro San Carlo, Naples, Accademia di Santa Cecilia of Rome, Auditorium Giuseppe Verdi, Milan, Budapest Liszt Festival, Teatro Avenida, Buenos Aires, etc.

As well as the "Faust" and "Dante" Symphonies, the repertoire of the FRANZ LISZT PIANO DUO includes Liszt's twelve Symphonic Poems and many two-piano transcriptions from Wagner's operas made by Liszt's pupils. In this way the two pianists follow in the footsteps of other famous historic duos that performed Liszt's work, such as Tausig and Bülow, or Friedheim and Siloti (the latter being great Liszt pupils of the second generation, who played the two Liszt Symphonies at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig in 1885).