“Egoyan’s take on new works is stunning…her clear, uncompromising taste was much in evidence in the choice of repertoire…Egoyan’s remarkable playing balanced that delicacy with intense focus, holding all in a net… the spaces in between the notes were still charged with presence… I even found myself confusing sound with touch…so convincingly had Egoyan restitched our reference points.”
— Globe and Mail“Eve Egoyan’s pianism has strengths in abundance, fully justifying Michael Finnissy’s testimony that ‘she illuminates the music she plays; an alchemy, authenticity and fearlessness’.”
— International Piano MagazineAN IMPECCABLE SOLO RECITAL BY EVE EGOYAN THAT EXCELS IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY
Eve Egoyan takes a diversion into lesser-known Satie with results to delight and ravish the ear.
“Hidden Corners” aptly describes the contents of this beautifully recorded, impeccably executed, and astutely programmed Satie recital… a pianist who not only understands and loves this music, but plays it with lots of character, style, taste, and pinpointed technical control.
— Jed Distler, Gramophone Magazine“Egoyan’s unflinching offering of an emotional landscape… a questing vision that makes her arguably one of the finest contemporary artists out there today.”
— Musical Toronto“A performer whose powers of listening cast a hypnotic spell over her audiences, opening their ears and hearts… What’s Egoyan ́s secret? Meticulous preparation. Discerning choice of repertoire-she only plays music she loves… An innate love for piano sonorities and texture. Abundant technique that never advertises itself. A passionate desire to get under the skin of the music she plays… and Egoyan ́s magical quality of listening… it all adds up to a trustworthiness:… your chances of having your time wasted at an Egoyan recital are very slim indeed… Egoyan ́s strong sense of program design deserves special mention… Her recitals take the listener through a journey that offers a pleasure and sense of discovery comparable to four-star gastronomy.”
— National Post
“Such a diversity of approaches enables Egoyan to display the rich variety and depth of her performance technique. The works demand virtuosity of extremely different sorts. In some cases, it is the capacity to play music with fast, complex passages. In others, it may involve the ability to sustain extraordinary delicacy and quiet over a long span. Many shadings in between these extremes are explored as well. In all cases, the pianist shows herself a sensitive listener as well as performer, having obviously internalized the works so that she can perform them almost as if they were her own.”
— Fanfare
“Egoyan made the time pass so quickly because she held our attention so perfectly. She played the work with an intensity that was seductive… Egoyan is the kind of committed, bold artist of every composer’s dreams.”
— Globe and Mail“Egoyan is the kind of pianist who excites the listener because of the total involvement she displays with whatever music she perform…Egoyan’s playing seems to meld with the piano. She is one with her instrument and at the same time she is one with the music. Hers is an extraordinary talent that concentrates almost exclusively on modern composers, especially living composers. She brings them to our attention as few other pianists manage to do. These composers produce works that for the most part appear inaccessible to the listener, but that changes when Egoyan performs their compositions. They suddenly lose their seeming distance from our musical experience, our surroundings, from our usual perception of what is music. They become accessible…Egoyan, whose sensitive touch makes all four pieces take on their own life, surprises with her forcefulness when required. It is startling, yet refreshing, and she captures these moments to perfection.”
— Lancette Journal of the Arts
“This was a wonderful performance, in a recital that, like the music, will resonate in the memory. A salutary reminder of how modern piano music can be so deeply affecting.”
– Edmonton Journal“The stripped down nature of Wu draws the listener’s attention to every subtle nuance of Egoyan’s playing. It abundantly clear why she’s sought after by composers from around the world, you can feel the passion that went into every note of the recording… Egoyan’s carefully restrained playing brings a sense of awe- inspiring beauty to the piece, proving that you can often achieve the best results by taking a simple approach to music.”
— Sceneandheard.ca
“Egoyan created a program that reminded me of something I’d read about visual artists, who in some respects refine our sense of sight, teaching us to discriminate and discern in ways that we had not been able before. The artist changes the way we see. Same with Egoyan and our hearing.”
— barczablog“Pianist Eve Egoyan is a composer ́s dream. The largeness of her spirit informs everything she plays with its sensitivity to the tiniest nuance, and her perceptive ability to make strange and unheard-of detail fit together in the most convincing way. Her technique is astonishingly supple in its fusion of warm, radiant tone with the utmost degree of virtuosity. What makes Egoyan an artist to die for is her devotion to new music. She specializes in the unfamiliar, but plays it so revealingly we come away from her recitals still wondering at the poetry she reveals in what can sound desiccated and dull… Her mind is all quicksilver in its lightness and leaping alertness… brilliantly clear and perceptive.”
— Halifax Chronicle-Herald
“Egoyan is a visionary musician and pianist who is forging a new path for contemporary solo piano music… She has an exceptional command of the piano and a completely solid understanding of the music. Most remarkably, she has a unique ability to interact with and engage the audience, taking them places one never would have dreamed were accessible through music.”
— The Kitchener-Waterloo Record
“Egoyan, so at home in a challenging aesthetic, performs it with the same integrity and intensity that a mystic brings to her prayers.”
— Globe and Mail“…A player of incredible, often very quiet intensity, Egoyan ́s capacity for fine-hair nuance was put to the ultimate test.”
— The Wire“It was clear that this is an extraordinarily lucid, penetrating pianist, with exquisite touch, total accuracy… she ́s a joy to watch and listen to, in short.”
— UW Gazette“[Eve Egoyan] draws out intense, difficult beauty… in the hands of a committed interpreter such as Eve Egoyan, [the music] becomes a pathway to the unconscious… The intensity of Egoyan ́s focus pulled the listener into a claustrophobic inner world, holding us within a net of promise that evaporated only as the final notes died away.”
— The Globe and Mail
“Two piano pieces from American composer Linda Catlin Smith, beautifully played by Eve Egoyan, showed how much undiscovered richness still lurks within the familiar grand piano when it’s played in the time-
honoured way at the keyboard… The familiar and the strange joined hands, in a beautiful and unsettling way.”
– The Telegraph“Egoyan’s playing was if anything more virtuosic, yet coming from a surprisingly still and calm player. I felt she was in a zone, very tranquil and still even when the music was frenetic. If good playing is understood as the transmission of body dynamics to the efficient and elegant creation of sound, this was like a master class, her body balletic in its smooth transfer of energy to the keys.”
— barczablog
“The recital featured not only flashy and virtuosic passages (for which she is overly qualified), but also soft and delicate melodic lines, which were each placed with the utmost care and attention. Egoyan is truly an astounding performer.”
— I care if you listen“Egoyan brings her unerring sensibility and majestic equilibrium to a piece that demands a rare emotional resilience in order to capture its unrelenting weave of sense and sensuality.”
— Musical Toronto“Our verdict is in: This was the year’s best music”
“So different from the joyful minimalism of her earlier music, the late Ann Southam’s final works for piano, written for Eve Egoyan, are spare and haunting, inhabiting a circumscribed world where the expressive resonance of even the simplest musical element is questioned, and where resolution is always possible but rarely permanent.”
— Elissa Poole, The Globe and Mail“2009: Ten Exceptional Recordings”
“The test of a great recording is whether you find yourself temporarily unable to live without it. For certain overlapping periods this year, I couldn’t stop listening to… Ann Southam’s immense, mysterious piano piece Simple Lines of Enquiry.”
— Alex Ross, The New Yorker