Shai Wosner - Press Reviews

Commission: Michael Hersch Piano Concerto along the ravines

magnificent performance… profoundly rewarding and no end [sic] fascinating.

Bernard Jacobson, Seen and Heard International, 22 May 2012

Based on poetry by Zbigniew Herbert, this piece for piano and orchestra paired well with Bluebeard’s Castle, sharing the opera’s emotional intensity and overwhelming sense of foreboding.

Dana Wen, The Sun Break, 17 May 2012

Album: Brahms and Schoenberg

His fingers are at the service of a keen musical mind and deep musical soul. He’s downright thrilling in recital. So if you have the chance to see him, take it. You’ll witness a young artist at the beginning of his career, who — decades down the line — will be spoken of as one of the greats.

National Public Radio USA, 30 December 2010

The links between these giants come through compellingly on the new recording of works by Brahms and Schoenberg by the excellent Israeli-born pianist Shai Wosner.   He plays the Schoenberg suite with crispness and clarity. The Gavotte and the Musette dance and swing with appropriate Baroque energy…Yet Mr Wosner also captures the modernist daring and wildness of the music. When the music turns restless, he plays with infectious spontaneity, adjusting tempos at will. He also gives a joyous, technically assured account of Brahms’s exhilarating Handel Variations… This is an inventively conceived and impressive recording.

Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, 10 October 2010

…this is pianism of the very highest order, involving and full-blooded, with such burnished passion from Wosner…an extraordinary demonstration of the delicacy and subtlety of Wosner’s artistry. In short, a fascinating disc: this is a pianist to watch.

Nicholas Salwey, International Piano Magazine, October 2010

This is a genuinely imaginative pairing of two composers who have more in common than their popular images might suggest… The sequence works well, and Wosner’s understated playing suits it perfectly.

Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 27 August 2010