"Ian Pace dispatches Finnissy's most calligraphically outrageous passages
as if they were Grade 8 sight-reading. Pace must be the most dedicated
Finnissian of them all."
The Sunday Times, London 4/2/96
"Ian Pace, a British pianist only three years older than Kissin and wth a
large measure of his virtuosity..his phenomenal skills were at the service
of innovative musical thought."
The Sunday Times, London 19/5/96
(on 'three virtuoso pianists' - Kissin, Pace, MacGregor)
"His [Finnissy's] colossal sequence of English Country Tunes (1977-85),
about as far from a stroll down a lane as a musician can stray, made me
feel, in Pace's giant handling, that Finnissy doesn't so much use different
kinds of language as enter another dimension of music-making altogether:
the fourth."
The Sunday Times, London 22/12/96
"Ian Pace not only possesses the requisite technique and stamina but is also
a musician of rare intellectual ability, as the extended programme notes to
each concert make clear. Perhaps most significant of all, however, is the
total commitment, palpable in every note he plays, to what is undeniably
one of the most significant piano music written this century."
Tempo, London October 1996
"[Finnissy's Piano Concerto No. 4]. The fact that Pace attempted the work at all is a marvel; that he produced a performance of seemingly effortless panache at the end of a lengthy and testing concert was little short of a miracle, for which he was ustly rewarded by a standing ovation from his audience.
Ian Pace's playing throughout these six recitals has amply demonstrated
his love for and understanding of this music. Nowhere was this more
tellingly shown than in English Country Tunes (1977), the earliest of
Finnissy's monumental piano cycles, which formed the last item of the
concert and ensured that the entire series ended with a bang. Pace's
performance was perfectly attuned to the piece. Dry and mercilessly
accurate, it allowed every nuance of this ironic, unsentimental masterpiece
to be clearly articulated...By enabling his audiences to hear this corpus
magisterially performed in thoughtfully planned and intelligently annotated
programmes, Ian Pace has done a sovereign service to the musical life of
this country."
Tempo, London April 1997
"One of the great piano marathons of our time enters its last lap."
Classical Music Magazine, London (before last concert)
"Much in demand as a major exponent of contemporary piano repertoire is the
brilliant and very busy young virtuoso Ian Pace....The dynamic young
pianist in his Skempton survey."
'Eye on the New', The Independent, London
"The Conway Hall..the home of much avant-garde music-making. The boldest,
most experimental undertakings take place here, many of them involving
pianist and writer Ian Pace."
The Sunday Times, London
"Ian Pace's fierce dedication to 20th-century and contemporary piano music has, in the six year since his return to England from the Julliard School, rightly attracted increasing attention... [Kagel's] An Tasten, On the Keys, offered more specifically pianistic, or anti-pianistic, demands, which Pace handled without obstacle, while the slower sections of A Deux Mains were expressed with a remarkable, urgent delicacy... Christopher Fox's substantial and mechanically demanding lliK..reliK ended the programme... the piece presented the superhuman challenge of achieving machine-like speed and precision... his boundary-breaking level of technical achievement clearly could not manifest ifself unsupported by an equally developed mental rigour."
Musical Opinion, UK
The opening piece, when a performer can be cruelly exposed, particularly
when playing a Bach fugue - in this case the Fantasy and Fugue in A minor -
was powerfully and accurately executed and set the standard for the whole
evening.
Beethoven's "Appassionata" Sonata found Ian Pace successfully taking an
overall view of the tragic tone of this work, binding its three movements
together so well that the headlong rush deathwards of the last movement
seemed the only and inevitable conclusion of this performance.
Ravels' Le Tombeau de Couperin perhaps excitied the audience most with its
variety. The concluding Toccata gave Ian the chance which he took
stunningly, to show us his incredible virtuosity, which he further
emphasised with free and powerful performances of Liszt's transcriptions of
music from Verdi's Aida and Rigoletto.
Ian Pace introduced us to the transcriptions of Michael Finnissy, a
contemporary composer much admired (and performed) by him. Beautifully
executed, full of wonderful harmonic invention."
Hartlepool Mail, UK
"The densely packed textures of Shellac must be just as tricky, through the
burden of notes certainly falls on the soloist. He - the ultra-deft Ian
Pace standing in for Rolf Hind - has big solos to open and close the piece,
each of a complexity bringing Hayes' teacher Michael Finnissy to mind, yet
in a 'languid' stretch of two-part writing also suggesting the rubato ease
of a Chopin or Faure."
"Ferneyhough's Lemma-Icon-Epigram, astonishingly played by Ian Pace...
excelling in complexity"
"Satie's Le Fils des Etoiles...very sensitively played by Ian Pace"
"A bold recital by Ian Pace [including Finnissy's Verdi Transcriptions and
Rossini (world premiere)]"
"The remarkable pianist Ian Pace..."
"Ian Pace is a young pianist who has already proved himself a professional
artist of experience and distinction, no less skilled in the classics than
in the complex avant-garde scores which he so resolutely champions.
I have no hesitation in warmly commending him to your attention."
"Ian combines a virtuoso technique with a sure intellectual grasp of the
music with which he id involved. He has a voracious appetite for new work;
not that this appetite is undiscriminating, as his programming combines
comprehensiveness and ambition with a sense of an appropriate context in
which the music should appear."
"Ian Pace is an IDEAL interpreter, not merely possessing extraordinary
manual virtuosity, control of fingers and wrist, but - possibly more
importantly to a composer - insight, intelligence and respect into and for
the text. He is capable of revealing the smallest details, often the result of
analytical research, of being able to 'phrase' and place it - exquisitely -
within the larger framework with passion and fact. He is able to do this
across a very wide range of 'styles'. Indeed his interests are
exceptionally catholic: although, justifiably, he has earnt a reputation
for being able to decipher and project pages fraught with detail and
unusual complexities of rhythm, he is also sensitive to the sparsest and
emptiest pages of Feldman and Skempton - and well able to colour these with
subtlety and finesse."
"Well after tonight, I just don't know what to say...Thank You!!"
"The performances are stunning...as composer I'm extremely pleased with
Tract which is better than the music has any right to expect."
"Ian Pace is a phenomenally gifted pianist whose performances this year of
the complete piano music of Michael Finnissy have amazed even his greates
admirers... [on own music] The difficulties lie beyond the notes, and it
takes a virtuoso of Ian Pace's calibre and conscientiousness to recognize
these difficulties and get the measure of them."
"He is a pianist of high virtuosity, true flair for the instrument and with
a thirsty curiosity for the literature. As an exponent of modern British
Piano Music he has done more for its propagation in New York than anyone I
know."
Sunday Times, London
"An alternative musical culture flourishes at the Conway Hall. Here a
variety of ensembles and, above all, pianist Ian Pace explore the far-flung
reaches of (post)-modernism...he fitted in a long recital of (mostly) new
works, all requiring utmost virtuosity."
The Sunday Times
"Schnitte und Bruche, Merkzeichen der medienschnellen Welt, zeichnen nicht
zur Brian Ferneyhough's frei tonales, fast klassich aufgebautes
Klavierstucke aus. Hochvirtuos trug das Ian Pace vor."
StaderTageblatt, Germany
"Brilliant soloist Ian Pace cruised through Tchaikovsky's 1st Piano Concerto."
Bristol Evening Post, UK
"His rendering of the notes themselves was formidably assured, both in the 'close harmony' technique of the first Tract - where a delectable, complex
polyphony results from keeping the hands in parallel motion around the
centre of the keyboard - and in the contrastingly disjunctive, splintering
technique of the abstruse second."
The Sunday Times, London 16/2/97
"We heard Paces' stupendous first performances of Julian Anderson's Two
Studies,"
The Times, London
"The programme opened with a dazzling execution, by the British pianist Ian Pace, of Richard Barrett's Tract (Part One) for solo piano......the whole
of which is persuasively and sensitively conveyed by Pace. In the span of
twelve minutes, Pace's performance of Barrett's piece managed to cover the
spectrum of the textured tonalities and moods of Beckett's own 'fundamental
sounds' most convincingly."
Strasbourg paper, France
"This excellent young pianist has an impressive musical
pedigree...immaculate finger-work in the quicker passages at the top end of
the keyboard and deep bass sonority at the lower end. In Beethoven's
Appassionata Op 57, he made light of the technical problems, bringing out
all the fiery emotions which makes this such a popular piece...exquisitely
played group of Chopin's Nocturnes and Waltzes, each a beautifully
fashioned jewel in its own right...Liszt's transcription of Verdi's music
from Rigoletto, full of pianistic fireworks and given bravura treatment."
Bath Evening Chronicle, UK
"Pianist Ian Pace (also responsible for the programming) contributed some noteable performances: his reading of Barrett's fiendish Tract part 1 grows palpably more magisterial with time."
Tempo, London
"Ian Pace, whose invincible fingers made child's play of even the most fiendish pages of Finnissy and Ferneyhough"
Malcolm Troup, Piano Journal, UK
Judith Weir, New Notes, UK
"Pianist Ian Pace injected a great deal of himself into readings of Richard
Barrett's Tract 1 and James Dillon's Spleen. He took Tract from the
'obsessively meticulous with nervous deliberation' to the 'appalled and
destructive'.. In contrast, Spleen, with more to do with Charles Baudelaire
than abdomens, was given the impressionist's brush as he captured each
fleeting moment in isolation without becoming disjointed."
Resonance, UK
"Ian Pace's performance of Liszt's 12th Hungarian Rhapsody provided a virtuoso romantic contrast, a test of strength which succeeded splendidly
thanks to wide ranging skills in the glittering descant and the smooth swinging bass"
Lubecker Nachrichten, Germany
"This clear, fervent pianist once again turns his quicksilver fingers to the tricky work of avant-gardist Michael Finnissy... this promises to be an evening of fluent pianism revelling in its own virtuoso extravagance."
Evening Standard, London
Evening Standard, London
Musical Times, UK
Time Out, London
Paul Crossley CBE
Matthew Greenall, Director, BMIC (reference)
Michael Finnissy (reference)
"Thanks again for a totally stonkingly BRILLIANT concert on Friday"
"The performance of Folklore was STUPENDOUS."
"What can I say? "Thank you" seems totally insufficient"
Michael Finnissy (various comments after concerts in the complete piano
works series)
Richard Barrett (on forthcoming NMC CD)
Howard Skempton (reference)
David Dubal, author Reflections from the Keyboard,
The Art of the Piano, etcFor recent concert reviews, click here
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