Described by critics as a ‘bona fide angel playing’ and an ‘electrifying pianist’, the young Ukrainian-born, North Carolina-based Valentina Lisitsa has been receiving rave reviews ever since her début in Avery Fisher Hall for the Mostly Mozart Festival. It would be hard to conceive of a more thoroughly Romantic or demanding programme than she presents here: Beethoven’s radical ‘Appassionata’ Sonata, via Schumann’s musical expression of an adult’s memories of childhood and Thalberg’s fantastic transformation of themes from Rossini’s most popular opera to Liszt’s pianistic danse macabre, inspired by a fresco by the medieval Italian artist Francesco Traini.