Liszt, observed Camille Saint-Saëns, ‘began by incarnating on the piano the panache of Romanticism’. The fiendish difficulty of pieces such as the Hungarian Rhapsodies established Liszt’s reputation. Yet the composer balanced his natural instincts as keyboard showman with a sense of reverence and respect for past masters, especially Johann Sebastian Bach. Simon Trpceski explores the complex creative psychology of Liszt in a programme spanning vast expressive dimensions, from the existential pain of the second of his Petrarch Sonnets to the unbridled heroism of the Hungarian Rhapsody in C sharp minor.