“I Wanna Be Like You”, Florian Noack

Commenting a few weeks ago on Rachmaninoff for Two by Sergei Babayan and Daniil Trifonov, we didn’t think we would be able to hear a piano record of this level for a long time. Well, it didn’t take long! Yet, Rachmaninoff for Two appears so almost unreal that you probably say to yourself: he is exaggerating. But no ! Florian Noack, a 34-year-old Belgian pianist, delivers here a miraculous CD that defies common sense. Transcriptions and adaptations of the Concerto for 4 keyboards of Bach, of the 1^D Walpurgis Night by Mendelssohn, by Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov, waltzes by Strauss, the Classical Symphony by Prokofiev… And everything falls with a radiant musicality, a luminous eloquence, a magical poetry, transitions out of nowhere, a world of enchanted colors. We never miss the orchestra. Noack takes us into a sound forest, exactly like Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt in his ballet album released in fall 2022. Everything is served on an ideally tuned piano, surrounded by perfect sound recording by Martin Rust. It’s stunning!

To watch on video