There is no question that 16-year-old French pianist Lise de la Salle is a young musician with phenomenal technique and musicality. This is, I believe, her second release; the first featured music of Rachmaninoff and Ravel and received pretty unanimous praise. The program on this CD has been carefully thought out. It consists of Bach keyboard works or transcriptions--some might balk at their being played on the piano, as they do at the recordings of Glenn Gould, András Schiff, Murray Perahia and others--followed by some of the rather more familiar Liszt pieces. As Amazon has not yet listed the works I shall do so: Bach: Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903; Organ Chorale Prelude 'Nun komm der Heiden Heiland,' BWV 659 (transcription by Ferruccio Busoni); Toccata in D Major, BWV 912; Chorale Prelude 'Ich ruf' zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ,' BWV 639 (transcr. Busoni); Organ Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543 (transcr. Franz Liszt) Liszt: 'Saint Francis of Paola Walking on the Water, S 175/2; Sonetto 104 del Petrarca, S 161; La lugubre gondola, No. 1, S 200; and the First Mephisto Waltz, S 514 There is absolutely nothing amiss in these performances except that, for the most part, they do not catch fire. Considering that there are magnificent performances of some of these pieces in the Bach, on the piano, by such masters as Schiff, Arrau and Edwin Fischer (Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue) and in the Liszt by Cziffra and Kempff (St. Francis of Paola); Bolet, Ashkenazy, Cziffra, Kapell, John Ogdon (Mephisto Waltz No. 1), Brendel (La lugubre gondola), Bolet, Horowitz, Kapell, Janis, Kempff (Sonetto 104) one has to ask what this release contributes. And the answer is that these are more than passable performances by a new pianist, a very young and talented pianist who, I believe, has the makings of a major musician and who bears keeping an eye (or ear) on. In the Liszt she manages, unlike some, in the bombastic pieces (St Francis, say) to play cleanly and also bring out inner voices with clarity and insight. She also never bangs. It does sound to me that she occasionally over-pedals, especially in the Bach transcriptions, yet she coaxes unfailingly gorgeous tone from her piano. I suspect she has not found her niche yet -- that is, the kind of music that brings out her best -- but I would love to hear her in some Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Debussy, say. A little background. She was born in Cherbourg, her talent was evidenced early and she had an early admission to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique-Paris. Her primary teachers have been Pascal Nemirovski, Pierre Réach, and Geneviève Joy-Dutilleux. She has won a number of competitions including, in 2004, the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York. Scott Morrison