Francesco Tristano (piano) Deutsche Grammophon476 417-3 **

Francesco Tristano is pianist from Luxembourg in his early 30s who specialises in early music and music from the last century or so and has an interest in electronics. He brings all together for this new CD, which begins with an Introit of his own before a dryishly nimble performance of Bach's Partita in B flat. There are a few wafts of electronic trickery during the Bach, and an endless layer of them in Cage's haunting In a Landscape, a piece for piano or harp solo, for which Cage himself seems to have envisaged no strange sounds other than those provided by the piano's sustaining pedal. The credits list producer Moritz von Oswald responsible for live electronics, and Rashad Becker for mix electronics. I'm not at all sure that the music (which also includes Cage's The Seasons and Etude Australe No 8 and Bach's Four Duettos) or the playing benefit from the treatment. url.ie/57as