Meditation of Highest Echelon: Babayan plays ‘Songs’
Sergei Babayan played his new solo recital programme SONGS at Mannheim's gorgeous baroque castle:
"A Meditation on the Highest Pianistic Level. - Lean back and savour! Sergei Babayan undertook a remarkable musical journey through the world of melody, with his solo recital programme SONGS. [...] Babayan got into a melodic flow of colours, putting at the centre multi-faceted phrasing, changing moods, virtuoso playing and joyful pianism, in short: the purity of music itself. The listener could lift off into a sphere of sound. Playing all pieces as one big suite, the artist had one work modulate into the next, without ever dropping the tension of the musical story and atmosphere - a meditation of the highest pianistic echelon." (Die Rheinpfalz)
“The listener could lift off into a sphere of sound. ”
"Drama in Music and Virtuoso Coups. - The night was marked by Babayan's phenomenal virtuoso powers, his incredibly refined sense of sound, and his constant control in forming a musical story. Babayan proved to be an exceptional storyteller and communicator of dramas of sound. The atmosphere was immediately loaded in unique intensity with the opening Schubert songs, from the intense 'Aufenthalt' to the dark, menacing bass line of 'Stadt' to the nightmarish contrasts of 'Gretchen am Spinnrad'. What a climactic eruption then in the sound atmosphere of 'Erlkönig's catastrophic drama. Virtuoso playing of the highest level." (Mannheimer Morgen)
