For his second album for the French label La Dolce Volta, following the magnificent “Album d'un voyageur” where he led us on a magnificent journey through Europe, travelling from Spain to Poland and exploring everything from the popular rhythms of Paul Ladmirault (Variations sur des airs de biniou) to Szymanowski’s Danses, here Florian Noack returns to Russian music - something which he has loved since his adolescence. Prokofiev has been haunting him since that age, when he watched the television broadcasts of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2003 and saw Prokofiev’s Second Concerto being performed by Severin von Eckardstein (who would later go on to win First Prize), marking a historic date in the history of the competition. With this new recording, Florian Noack composes a programme that alternates between relatively rare works (Tales of an old grandmother, Quatre Études, Op. 2) and more famous scores, in this case two absolute masterpieces of Prokofiev’s piano work. Composed between 1915 and 1917, the Visions fugitives form a catalogue of twenty short piano pieces inspired by the symbolist poet Constantin Balmont. The Belgian pianist’s interpretation is more tender and dreamy rather than sarcastic (Raekallio, Ondine 1989), worried (Gourari, ECM 2014, with her melancholic poignancy) or fierce (Mustonen, Decca). He concludes his recital with Piano Sonata No. 6, Op. 82, the first of the “war sonatas”, giving a performance with moderate but nevertheless firm contrasts. © Pierre- Yves Lascar/Qobuz