Born in 1987, Emanuele Delucchi already has to his credit a string of critically acclaimed recordings for Piano Classics and other labels. Particular praise has been lavished on the technical finesse and subtly musical qualities of his Godowsky albums (PCL0122, PCL0096), which between them contain some of the most challenging music ever written for the piano.

However, Delucchi has also addressed himself to valuable rarities of the Romantic repertoire, such as Eugen d’Albert’s lush transcriptions of Bach (PCL10139), and Carl Czerny’s tribute to Bach (PCL10204), Der Pianist im klassischen Style, which amounts to his own Well-Tempered Clavier of 48 preludes and fugues.

Aside from his career as a busy solo performer, giving recitals across Italy and farther afield, the Milan-based Delucchi is also a teacher (at the city’s Cluster school of music) and a composer of note. His music is inevitably informed by his richly cosmopolitan education and outlook: his booklet notes pay tribute at different points to sources as diverse as Liszt, Einaudi and James Joyce, testament to the breadth of his outlook, and a clue to the tonal roots of music that is nonetheless marked by the lively mind of its creator.

Among the original works are three from a series of six Ricercare composed between 2017 and 2021, which ‘search’ (recercare) for their form from small and sometimes modest beginnings, though the third of them develops from a 14-note theme into counterpoint from which fulfilment is purposely withheld. The album also features a waltz dedicated to his wife Francesca, a mysterious Lullaby for Chiara and a striking opening Toccata.

Between Delucchi’s original compositions he has interleaved diverse transcriptions and arrangements of his own from pieces he particularly admires: ‘Pur ti miro’ from Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, a trio of madrigals by Gesualdo, a late song by Schubert (Im Frühling) and the Capricho árabe by Francisco Tárrega: all more or less faithful in intent, leaving both the spirit and the substance of the original intact.