“The music critics of the Parisian press dedicated glowing articles last week to the 11 years’ old Turkish pianist Idil Biret. Mlle Idil Biret scored a triumphant success in performing Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos in E flat, K. 365 with the great master of the piano Wilhelm Kempff, conducted by Joseph Keilberth.”
La Republique – France, 18 February 1953
“Miss Biret was soloist in an entrancing performance of Mozart’s E flat Concerto No. 22, K. 482 with the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Mlle Nadia Boulanger. The variety of her playing, its finely-shaded gradations and brilliant but never mechanical figurations, revealed her as already a remarkable artist. Not for many years has a Hallé (Manchester) audience heard such perfectly balanced Mozart playing… No words can describe the wondrous finale, with its mixture of gaiety and anguish. This was a performance in which every note counted for its full value.”
Daily Telegraph – UK 1963
“The soloist, at the SSO concert in the Sydney Opera House performing the K. 466 Mozart piano concerto, was Idil Biret, the Turkish pianist making her first Australian tour, and her playing was eminently musical, stylishly phrased, totally free of mannerisms or effects imposed from outside, firm yet emotionally attuned to a work with a deep vein of sadness.”
Fred Blanks, The Sydney Morning Herald – Australia 1980