What the critics say:

July 2, 2002, Philadelphia Inquirer 

Mozart festival comes to a close
The sold-out audience at Verizon Hall couldn't resist applauding - even when it was urged not to
Peter Dobrin

"The great surprise soloist of this festival was pianist Anton Kuerti, who performed with the orchestra Saturday night for the first time since winning a student competition here in 1958. Born in Vienna and trained in part at the Curtis Institute of Music, Kuerti managed to make strong interpretive statements within a moderate range of expressive devices.

He performed the Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat major (K. 271). He used no sharp changes in dynamics, but enough to tell the story. There's not a lot of freedom in his tempos, but he is not stiff. He's always a refined player, not unlike Mieczyslaw Horszowski, one of his teachers at Curtis (the other was Rudolf Serkin). Expressively, he had a lot to say. I doubt I've ever heard the little minuet that appears surprisingly in the middle of the third movement played with more dignity, or with a greater sense of being downright profound"

Complete review available upon request.

Concert Review, Monday, May 6, 2002, Columbus Dispatch

Pianist, CSO share Beethoven's powerful poetry
Barbara Zuck, Dispatch Senior Critic

The Columbus Symphony Orchestra offered concert-goers a high-minded musical option for a truly beautiful spring weekend. And many took it, reasoning, perhaps, that Beethoven performed by this orchestra with pianist Anton Kuerti in the Southern Theatre was a combination too good to miss.

At yesterday's concluding performance of this year's Beethoven Festival, a good-sized audience responded enthusiastically to all proceedings, and their response was warranted. Two Beethoven overtures and the final two piano concertos in Kuerti's five-concerto cycle all were dispatched with care, intelligence and technical aplomb.

All three concerts featured Kuerti and CSO associate conductor Peter Stafford Wilson, who attentively followed the guest artist and matched his moods.

As he did during his solo recital at the Southern in March, Kuerti again played the Battelle Steinway owned by the Columbus Chamber Music Society. Reconditioning work has continued on the society's newly acquired piano; it sounded more even and more brilliant than at its debut, and created a perfect balance with the 40-piece orchestra. Particularly tasty are the deliciously sparkling upper registers when fingered lightly by this artist.

Overtures graced the openings of both halves. The Overture to King Stephen, first, may have surpassed the Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, at least for establishing a level of excitement, but both were enjoyable.

Kuerti played concertos No. 1 and No. 5 on Friday night, No. 2 on Saturday night and Nos. 3 and 4 yesterday afternoon. For many, these may be the favorites of the set, so the best did indeed come last.

I think of the first movement of the Third Concerto as the artist's opportunity to make the piano burn with angry intensity. But that is not what Kuerti chose to do yesterday. Rather, he imbued the allegro and the subsequent movements as well with a searching lyricism and warmth.

In retrospect, he may have taken this path to set up a contrast with the Fourth, where the artist certainly did light fires.

Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto achieves a level of eloquence matched, perhaps, only by the Violin Concerto or the Ninth Symphony. While giving the middle movement its customary thoughtfulness, Kuerti interpreted the outer movements with surprising majesty and brilliance, lending them an expansiveness and imperial stature more often reserved for the Emperor.

Yet it worked masterfully in this context; with Beethoven's powerful poetry having set the world in order, all seemed as right inside as outside the hall.

April 4, 2002, Toronto Globe & Mail,
Anton Kuerti with the St. Lawrence String Quartet

Schumann Playing on the Highest Level

The last time I heard Robert Schumann's Fantasie in C, Op. 17, disquieting doubts about its validity as a work began to nag at my subconscious. This music which, till then, had seemed one of the marvels of the romantic piano literature was somehow spoiled by the performance of a gifted and acclaimed
young pianist...The hurtful memory of [that] performance lay in my mind like an undigested meal for nearly a year.

Then, on Tuesday night, at the Glenn Gould Studio, Anton Kuerti, in an incandescent, deeply intuitive performance -- one which seemed almost to emanate from the mind of the composer himself -- gave the Fantasie back its identity and its magic, and held a capacity audience spellbound. What a relief, and what a joy.

Kuerti's playing investigated every avenue of Schumann's wide-ranging and singular imaginative achievement, moving with steely purpose, yet with the utmost delicacy of understanding, through its many startling changes of course, of rhythm, of harmony and texture, without ever losing the thread
or violating the nature of its vision.

This was Schumann-playing on the highest level, and it made an enthralling solo centrepiece for a CBC OnStage concert teaming Kuerti with the St. Lawrence Quartet. Kuerti and the quartet's first violin, Geoff Nuttall, opened the evening with a handsome reading of Schumann's A Minor Duo-Sonata, Op. 105,
reminding us how intensely musical Nuttall is beneath his rather nervous histrionics, and giving us due notice of Kuerti's mastery as a collaborator and as a Schumann interpreter.

After intermission, Kuerti and the quartet paced each other in a full-blooded, virtuosic account of Antonin Dvorak's gorgeous Quintet in A, Op. 81. This work, with its rich and complex opening movement and its three dance-inspired others, is both a high challenge and a deep charmer, worthy to stand with the piano quintets of Schumann and Brahms and often more sheer fun than either.

On Tuesday, Kuerti and the four young strings seemed to touch all of its life straight on the quick. Lesley Robertson's eloquent viola solo in the Dumka was just one instance of the St. Lawrence's increasing assurance, and with Kuerti's piano fanning its flame, it never played better. More please.

Some recent reviews ...

"The big reason to cheer was Kuerti's dynamic performances [Beethoven Concertos 1 & 5 with Jukka-Pekka Saraste] There was not a shred of complacency here; Kuerti has too much coiled energy, too much punch, pounce and snap.He hammers the upper register with ferocity but still keeps the wood in the sound; his trills are so close they actually ring, rather than wobble; he jumps into phrases, peremptory in all the right spots; and he can make a detached line sing, so it literally cuts through the orchestra. It was enough to make one think we don't hear enough Beethoven these days."
Globe and Mail, Toronto

"Anton Kuerti is one of the greatest pianists of our time. Not only his Czerny and Beethoven, but also his Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Glasunoiw and Scriabin are proof of this."
Review of Czerny Sonata CD in Fono Forum, Germany

"He conducted with his head and whichever hand was available. Kuerti's elegant way with the beginnings and ends of phrases, exquisite control of dynamics and fleet but unflashy virtuosity communicated itself to the orchestra."
Evening Post, Wellington New Zealand

"...an ideal chamber music musician; his playing was supple, genial and graceful...Mr. Kuerti's incisiveness gave just the right degree of tension to the music." (performances of the Schumann Piano Quartet, Quintet and Songs at the Metropolitan Museum)
New York Times

"GRAND ROMANCE IN MAGIC DISPLAY OF PIANISM. This was pianism in the grand romantic tradition, and an unforgettable performance made every note sound considered and relevant, while at the same time emerging as if spontaneously. The superficial characteristics of his interpretations are dramatic contrasts in tone, colour, rhythm and dynamics. All four were amply displayed in an awe-inspiring performance of Beethoven's Bagatelles Op. 126. The most magical, thrilling 'Moonlight' Sonata I've heard."
Courier-Mail, Brisbane, Australia

"Beethoven [Concerto No. 3, with Pinchas Zukerman] by Anton Kuerti is always a remarkable thing. I find it downright inspiring, in an era of insipid and automatic performances, to discover evidence of ingenuity and daring hovering above the keyboard."
Ottawa Citizen

"Anton Kuerti, who joined the St. Lawrence Quartet in quintets by Brahms and Schumann, likewise delivered some of the finest playing this reviewer has heard from the distinguished pianist....Kuerti is the first pianist I've heard join in the St. Lawrence's recreative excitement as an equal."
National Post, Toronto