“Idil Biret’s new Liszt album (2010) prompts a reappraisal of her extraordinary talent…In her Sonata…you will hear playing of a formidable power and assurance…There is no mistaking her lightning reflexes in the second of the Paganini Etudes and her vivo in the imitation sautille bowing of No 4 would make even Heifetz envious. Biret’s brilliant, iron-clad Steinway is well recorded and…in her Liszt, there is stunning proficiency and a forbidding manner very much her own.” GRAMOPHONE (UK) / Bryce Morrison
“Idil Biret was a thousand times right in playing the Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz, in Liszt’s transcription (at her Paris recital). With confounding technical skill and an admirable musicality Idil Biret has avenged pianists for the insult Berlioz once committed against them by ignoring them.” LE MATIN (France) / Claude Samuel
“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 at Alice Tully Hall on Thursday night.” NEW YORK TIMES (USA) / Donald Henahan
“The performance of the extraordinary pianist Idil Biret uncannily suggests the colors and textures of the original (Symphonie Fantastique) and the recorded sound by Finnadar—which has been presenting this artist in remarkably adventurous records of contemporary music—is wonderful.” BOSTON GLOBE (USA) / Richard Dyer
“When played by a virtuoso like Idil Biret, the overstrained piano makes Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique transparent and one realizes that it is possible for a pianist with well trained hands to imitate the orchestra instruments and make them fairly recognizable.” SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG (Germany) / Joachim Kaiser
“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 (Germany) / Frank Siebert