Every so often a debut recording arrives that tells you exactly who a young pianist wants to be. For the British pianist Thomas Kelly, that calling card is Ad Nos, a programme of organ works reimagined for the piano, and it has just been singled out by Gramophone among its best classical albums of 2026 so far.
The magazine praised the record in terms that any pianist would treasure, noting that it shows both fine playing and an adventurous curiosity about repertoire. As Gramophone put it, the album demonstrates his brilliant playing alongside an exploratory interest in repertoire, including piano transcriptions of nineteenth-century organ works. That is a lot to ask of a first album, and it is precisely why this one is worth talking about.
Why organ music on the piano?
The premise sounds almost contrary. The organ is the instrument of vast sustained sound, of pedal ranks and cathedral acoustics. The piano, for all its power, cannot hold a note the way a pipe can. And yet the history of the keyboard is full of pianists who could not resist the challenge of carrying that grandeur to their own instrument.
Kelly's debut, released on Rubicon Classics, is described as a daunting programme of organ works arranged by great pianists for their own instrument. The centrepiece is Liszt's mighty Fantasia and Fugue on the chorale "Ad nos, ad salutarem undam" in Busoni's transcription, which lends the album its title, and the disc also gathers a Reubke sonata in an August Stradal arrangement and a transcription by Stephen Hough. It runs to well over an hour of some of the most demanding writing a pianist can take on.
A pianist worth watching
If the name is new to you, it will not stay that way. Kelly is the current Benjamin Britten Fellow at the Royal College of Music, where he was honoured with the Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother Rose Bowl, and he made his concerto debut playing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 at just nine years old. He studied with Dmitri Alexeev and has taken top prizes at the Leeds and Hastings competitions, more recently winning Second Prize at the Liszt Competition in Utrecht with Liszt's Second Piano Concerto. A Liszt specialist choosing a Liszt-anchored debut is no accident.
The art of transcription, then and now
There is something quietly moving about a young artist reaching back to Busoni, Stradal and the arrangers of the Romantic age. Transcription was once a central part of concert life, the way audiences met music they could not otherwise hear. To revive that tradition today is both a scholarly act and a generous one. It says: come and hear these great structures rebuilt in front of you, note by note.
As a pianist myself, I find this repertoire irresistible for exactly that reason. The best transcriptions are not about showing off, even when they are ferociously difficult. They are about translation, about finding the colour and line that let a listener forget an organ was ever involved. It is a discipline close to the heart of chamber music too, where every voice must be heard and balanced, and it is a thread that runs through my own recitals and collaborations.
A recording to seek out
Debut albums are fragile things. They can vanish without notice. This one has instead landed on one of the most respected lists in the business, which suggests Kelly has judged both his repertoire and his moment beautifully. For anyone who loves the piano as a builder of worlds, Ad Nos is well worth an evening of close listening.
If it leaves you hungry for more piano storytelling in the flesh, I would warmly invite you to explore my upcoming concerts or get in touch about a performance. Music like this deserves a live room and an attentive ear.
