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. In the years from 1999 to 2001 the two pianists performed at many of Italy’s leading concert venues, including La Scala in Milan, the Teatro Bellini in Catania and the Music Festival of Ravello. In that period 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).

As well as the instrumental version of the Faust-Symphonie, in the year 2000 the duo performed the version that includes a solo tenor and male chorus for the Arena concert season in Verona; they were accompanied by the tenor Leonardo De Lisi and the chorus of the Fondazione Arena. In October of the same year, this time at the Istituzione Universitaria dei Concerti of Rome, it gave the first Italian performance of Liszt’s Dante-Symphonie (the version with female chorus, in collaboration with the Teatro dell’Opera of Rome).

For the Dante-Symphonie Bresciani and Nicolosi, in collaboration with the director Paolo Miccichè, have recently 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 and the recitation of passages from Dante in the form of ‘melodrama’. The event was first performed in July 2002 at the Ravenna Festival, the Leuciana Festival of Caserta and the Festival of Ravello, with Monica Guerritore and Gabriele Lavia in the acting roles and with the choruses of the Stagione Armonica (Padua) and the Teatro San Carlo (Naples).

As well as the Faust and Dante Symphonies, the repertoire of the FRANZ LISZT PIANO DUO includes Liszt’s twelve Symphonic Poems and various 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: for example, those of Tausig and von 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).

Among the most significant engagements for the 2002/3 season, it is worth singling out a repeat of the multimedial Faust-Symphonie for the Teatro dell’Opera of Rome and various performances of the same repertoire in concert form for the theatres in Modena and Novara with the Coro Filarmonico della Scala and various other concert organizations and festivals (Amici della Musica of Palermo, Settimane Gustav Mahler of Dobbiaco, etc.).