Martucci’s splendid Fantasy on Verdi’s la Forza del Destino, previously unrecorded on disc, is the first in this sequence of operatic piano transcriptions that includes three plausible excursions into the 19 th century genre by Wright himself. His goal has been to bring together those virtuoso ‘duellists’ Liszt and Sigismund Thalberg, with a special brief for the latter in his bicentenary year (2012). Thalberg’s Concert Fantasy on La Traviata makes a gripping centerpiece – not least because of an immensely sustained high trill – alongside Liszt’s glorious version of Isolde’s Liebestod. And his rendering of Bellini’s aria Casta diva sounds like a Chopin nocturne, fascinatingly reversing the direction of influence.