IDIL BIRET

75th Anniversary Concert

“When a great pianist like Idil Biret played the 1945 Hindemith Piano Concerto, that was a major event. This is a tough concerto, and it needs a tough player who can essay the cadenzas, overcome the orchestra, and make the last movement as original as possible. This was where Hindemith gave the artist and orchestra four variations – including a pounding goose-step parody March – before announcing the variations at the end!! Like his opera Here and Back, Hindemith reversed the music. Both Ms. Biret and Mr. Shimada made it work.” – Concertonet.com

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Bach and Mozart Edition

“How Idil Biret combines the strict discipline of the Bach score with the capacity to build sovereign forms is exemplary.”
– Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten

“Not for many years has a Manchester Hallé audience heard such perfectly balanced Mozart playing.” – The Daily Telegraph

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Beethoven Edition

“Love of Beethoven’s works threads through Biret’s life like a red ribbon. Her studio recordings and live concerts show this in an unequivocal language… Next to the Piano Concertos, the Triple Concerto and the Choral Fantasy she has also recorded and performed on stage all the Piano Sonatas and Symphony Transcriptions becoming perhaps the only artist to reach this level of completeness… This knowledge of Beethoven one hears in every nuance in Idil Biret’s playing.” – Piano News

“From the outset of the First Symphony one feels that Idil Biret grasps the size of Beethoven’s style. The polyphony is laid out in a relaxed way with little indulgence in point-making. She keeps her big line, and yet is thankfully sparing in her use of fortissimos… The piano tone is sumptuous. Biret’s gentle and almost sensuous sonorities are really captivating… This is a remarkable achievement.” – Gramophone

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Brahms Edition

“When I heard Idil Biret play, I was fascinated, I had tears in my eyes.”
– Arthur Rubinstein

“This is the real complete solo piano music of Brahms.” – Diapason

“Through all 12+ hours of this colossal undertaking, Idil Biret’s playing is never less than excellent, and in many cases, hers deserve to be among the performances of choice.” – American Record Guide

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Chopin Edition

“Idil Biret, this great pianist…playing Chopin in its entirety in a breathtaking interpretation. One could not imagine that the Ballades, Preludes, Sonatas, Scherzi, Polonaises, Nocturnes, Mazurkas and the Concertos would today find an interpreter of this dimension. But, there it is. Authority, epic sense, rigour, power, emotion, poetry, all these elements are joined together. To crown it all, with this knowledgeable combination of a powerful technique and deep feeling of rubato, through which Idil Biret reaches the greatest, namely her own masters Kempff and Cortot. Through her, Chopin is rendered to us in all his glory and many faces. It was necessary above all to have a pianist whose daring would not diminish. Truly, Idil Biret directs with a stupefying instinct her unquenchable thirst for challenges and imposes during this eighteen hour stretch as one would in an entire lifetime.” – Le Nouvel Observateur

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Franz Liszt 200th Anniversary Edition

“Only a brave soul and a confident technician would set out in public to play Liszt’s transcription for piano of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique as Idil Biret did.” – The New York Times

“Nearly a quarter century separates the two Liszt recordings of the Turkish pianist, who with the Paganini Etudes (1987) demonstrates what a brilliant virtuoso she was, and with the Liszt Sonata – recorded in 2010 – shows that she still is. Further, her playing has gained a majestic depth and an expressive self-will, as the Sonata, an exploding testimony of Biret’s late style, exhibits. These recordings, very well prepared in respect of sound, are an important contribution to the Liszt year.” – Fonoforum

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Schumann Edition

“Idil Biret takes the opening movement of Schumann’s Kinderszenen very briskly and impetuously, but the performance then settles down and is sensitive and well characterized. Good recording, recommendable.”
– The Penguin Guide

“In 1959 Pretoria (France) entrusted the young pianist Idil Biret the recordings of Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Op. 12 and Brahms’ Intermezzi, Op. 117. Thus began a recording career of extraordinary importance, which was only discovered in the West over the years. Biret is an extremely versatile performer with an assimilative capacity comparable to that of the greatest pianists. In reality, the Turkish pianist is one of them.”
– RITMO

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Rachmaninov Edition

“Idil Biret’s complete Rachmaninov is unsurpassed for aristocratic, passionate pianism and exacting musicianship.” – The Boston Globe

“It is a world in which Idil Biret is completely at home. She is an inspired Rachmaninov player.” – BBC Music Magazine

“The thought of a Rachmaninov symposium without Idil Biret is like Hamlet without the prince.” – Piano Magazine

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Concertos & Solo Music Edition

After making her first solo piano LP recording in 1959 at the age of seventeen, Idil Biret had to wait for nearly three decades before recording with an orchestra in a studio. In 1988 she recorded in London Saint-Saëns’ 2nd and 4th Concertos with the legendary Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by James Loughran. During the next 25years Biret made recordings of over sixty works for piano and orchestra in studio and at concerts under the baton of eminent conductors including Jean Fournet, Emil Tabakov, and Toshi Shimada – all included in this enormous release.

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20th Century Piano Edition

“We are in the presence of one of the greatest virtuosos of our time. I do not see in her generation any other pianist who possesses an equal mastery of the keyboard, in the service of such a mature mind so rich in imagination.” – Nouvelle Litteraires

“Turkish pianist Idil Biret was giving a rare performance of Pierre Boulez’s 2nd Piano Sonata. Miss Biret’s way with the piece was astonishing. She slammed into the keyboard and attacked the music tempestuously. She drove the music with an unrelenting virtuosity…
This was a gripping, impressive account of a commanding score.”
– The New Yorker

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LP Originals Edition

“This is the most successful direct-to-disc piano recording I have heard. Having an artist as sensitive and accomplished as Idil Biret at the keyboard is an enormous help. Hers is a bona fide virtuoso rendition.”
– High Fidelity

“For well versed insiders of music, Idil Biret is since years a trusted and respected artist. Her Scriabin, Bartók and Prokofiev interpretations are exemplary classical benchmarks.” – Die Welt

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