The concert was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the friendship between the United States and Vietnam through music and culture. Quynh Nguyen’s performance was a great example of how music can build bridges and strengthen ties between two countries.
Respectfully,
Kate Bartlett
Cultural Affairs Officer
U.S. Embassy Hanoi
"Her delightful Weill Hall recital offered renditions of Bach's G-minor English Suite (with a witty suggestion of a tambourine in the Gavotte), Schubert's D-major Sonata, D. 850, and vernal, lyrical accounts of Chopin's E-major Scherzo and late E-flat Nocturne (Op. 55, No. 2). Likewise memorable was her fleet, crystalline Ravel Tombeau de Couperin at a later Merkin Hall concert."Harris Goldsmith Musical America
She is exquisitely trained as a pianist, pedagogue and scholar. She is a beautiful and exciting performer, a dedicated teacher and a profound writer on music. She exhibits this through her great experience on stage and accomplishments in the classroom. She is a most successful recording artist, adding to her artistic profile.
Jerome Rose - May 2023 Founder and Director, International Keyboard Institute & Festival
Your performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major, K.453 was splendid virtually from beginning to end. Your artistic approach to the Allegro shared your fluid technique and understanding of performance practice. I sincerely enjoyed how you constructed each phrase and how carefully you listened to and dialogued with the JägerMeister Orchestra and Maestro Zilberkant. Your enthusiasm for Mozart was evident in the Andante and the Allegretto-Presto as well. Mozart sounds like a first musical language for you. There was a clear musical narrative shared throughout the performance.
Congratulations and thank you for sharing such a delightful rendering. _ Micheal BensonMichael Benson The American Prize
Congratulations and thank you for sharing such a delightful rendering. _ Micheal Benson
Messiaen: Great feel, colors, phrasing all good. Excellent playing. Chopin: Very beautiful.Jeffrey Biegel The American Prize
"[On] Saturday night, she made her local debut, and it was easy to understand why even people who are hard to please like her so much. She is a musical and expressive player who commands a flexible, singing sound. She is often sensitive and poetic, and when she should dazzle with lively rhythm, piquant inflexions, and dashing virtuosity -- as in Chopin's ''Andante spianato and Grand Polonaise brillante,'' or in the Chopin waltz she offered as an effervescent encore -- she knows how to. Quynh opened with an unusual Sonata in F Minor by Muzio Clementi, which she played in an operatic and romantic style. Her playing of Ravel's ''Tombeau de Couperin'' was marvelous: she excels in everything that requires elegance, proportion, balance, taste, and wit...Schumann's ''Kreisleriana'' was almost too beautifully played, with subtle interplay of inner voices... "Richard Dyer The Boston Globe
. . . her pianistic ability is beyond question; proven by her many concerts, reviews and recordings. She demonstrates in her performances a unique combination of virtuosity, poetry and passion. It is always a joy to be in the audience when she performs . . . [She is] a brilliant pianist . . . she has worked with me as well asBella Davidovich and is a truly wonderful artist . . . she is extraordinary in every way . . . there is a loveliness and strength to her playing and true qualities that make her a superb performer of Chopin.Jerome Rose, Faculty, Mannes College of Music
Quynh plays with great dexterity and technique, but also with artistry and sensitivity –and a very personal touch of romance in her interpretations. There is poetry in her every phrase and great emotion (often painful sadness and at other times joyful and playful exuberance). Ms. Nguyen is a consummate artist, with an excellent ear (she has perfect pitch), and very traditional music training, excelling in Baroque as well as classical styles. But her very special forte is the music of passion and youthful expression, which makes her every performance an adventure!Paul Chihara - March 2023 Paul Chihara - March 2023
This young pianist, born in Vietnam and trained in Russia as well as in the United States, received high praise from reliable quarters for her New York debut recital last year. Now she offers an interesting and well-varied program of Clementi (Sonata Op. 13 No. 6), Schumann ("Kreislariana"), Ravel ("Le Tombeau de Couperin") and Corigliano ("Fantasia on an Ostinato").James Oestreich The New York Times
A New York debut of exceptional distinction was played by pianist Quynh Nguyen on March 3rd at Weill Hall as part of Artists International’s Debut Winners Series. Ms. Nguyen, who was born in Vietnam to a family of musicians, played her first recital at the age of nine, and at eleven made her orchestral debut performing Mozart’s Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466. That same year she gave a recital in Moscow, and at 13, received a full scholarship to study at the Gnessin Institute in Moscow. She continued her studies as a scholarship student at the Juilliard School and at the Mannes College of Music, where she received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees respectively. She is currently enrolled in the DMA program at CUNY. Her teachers include Oleg Mussorin, Robert Turner, Bella Davidovich, Alexander Paley, Jacob Lateiner and Jerome Rose. And, as her bio for the recital adds, “she has performed in master classes given by Tatiana Nicoleiva, Garrick Ohlsson, Bryce Morrison, Pavlina Dokovska, Peter Frankel, Richard Goode, and András Schiff”. Ms. Nguyen’s credentials are indeed impressive, and little wonder that she has distinguished herself in various piano competitions and gained extensive concert experience worldwide—in Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the United States.
But even my fondest hopes and expectations were gloriously sustained and surpassed by this dream of a recital. Ms. Nguyen’s pianism and music making are graced with beauty and exuberance. She is a real artist; a wonderfully communicative performer obviously intoxicated with the joy of living her music and sharing it with those lucky enough to hear it spring from her soul. What a compendium of intellect, sophistication and taste! And she is also (in her unobtrusive way) an accomplished virtuoso, equipped to dispatch even some of the most difficult and subtle compositions on her program (J.S. Bach’s English Suite in G minor BWV 808, Schubert’s Sonata in D major, Op. 53, D. 850; and three of Chopin’s most rarified masterworks, his Scherzo No. 4 in E major, Op. 54; his late Nocturne in E flat major, Op. 55 No. 2; and earlier but demanding Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise, Op. 22).
The Bach Suite took wing with infectious brio. Her propulsive way with the opening Preludium may have initially seemed too dangerously precipitate but the rhythmic control was secure and admirable steady. The ensuing Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gavotte and Gigue all likewise shared that same lustrous singing tone. The Sarabande was especially modest and eloquent, and she brought a delightful sense of humor to her fleet delivery of the Gavotte (with the tambourine-like repeated bass notes in its second strain deliciously and tastefully emphasized; and the almost Schumannesque maggiore central Trio poignantly savored).
The first movement of the Schubert Sonata took wing at an almost wicked clip. Here, if there is any room for reservation, Ms. Nguyen might have allowed for just a hairbreadth more tonal solidity and breathing space to make the most of this extremely Beethovenian writing. But, no matter, the potentially quirky crossing of hands and such were admirably under rhythmic control (no Schnabel-like desperation this time!). And how Ms. Nguyen’s spot-on sense of color and timing kept the potentially repetitious Con moto second movement airborne. (All of the myriad variations of filigree were splendidly creative and engaging and never once did interest flag). For once, there were no “editorializing” of rhythm in the Allegro vivace Scherzo (again that “Tradition” established almost reflexively by that famous old Schanbel recording), and in retrospect it was a pleasant and unpretentious departure from precedent. The Rondo: Allegro moderato, taken a bit more rapidly than usual, delectably recreated the nursery-rhyme “Sing a Song of Six Pence” quality in this fleet and lovely version.
And so it was with the Chopin group heard after intermission: the Fourth Scherzo had an almost Mendelssohn-like gossamer quality. Filigree was impishly tossed off, the octaves sonorously in place, and the central Trio section again achieved without fuss or contortion. The Nocturne was, if anything, even better: the absolute highpoint of the afternoon: I have never heard it played more eloquently, by Ignaz Friedman, Perahia, Horowitz, Rubinstein—or anyone whose interpretations linger in the mind’s ear. (Yes, this performance was truly sublime.) The Andante Spianato had a classical simplicity and proportion, and the following Grande Polonaise—a brilliance and swagger—with some effective left hand anticipations and octave amplifications making the proceedings all the more stylish and effective.
We will, no doubt, be regularly hearing much more from Quynh Nguyen: Remember her name!Harris Goldsmith New York Concert Review
But even my fondest hopes and expectations were gloriously sustained and surpassed by this dream of a recital. Ms. Nguyen’s pianism and music making are graced with beauty and exuberance. She is a real artist; a wonderfully communicative performer obviously intoxicated with the joy of living her music and sharing it with those lucky enough to hear it spring from her soul. What a compendium of intellect, sophistication and taste! And she is also (in her unobtrusive way) an accomplished virtuoso, equipped to dispatch even some of the most difficult and subtle compositions on her program (J.S. Bach’s English Suite in G minor BWV 808, Schubert’s Sonata in D major, Op. 53, D. 850; and three of Chopin’s most rarified masterworks, his Scherzo No. 4 in E major, Op. 54; his late Nocturne in E flat major, Op. 55 No. 2; and earlier but demanding Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise, Op. 22).
The Bach Suite took wing with infectious brio. Her propulsive way with the opening Preludium may have initially seemed too dangerously precipitate but the rhythmic control was secure and admirable steady. The ensuing Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gavotte and Gigue all likewise shared that same lustrous singing tone. The Sarabande was especially modest and eloquent, and she brought a delightful sense of humor to her fleet delivery of the Gavotte (with the tambourine-like repeated bass notes in its second strain deliciously and tastefully emphasized; and the almost Schumannesque maggiore central Trio poignantly savored).
The first movement of the Schubert Sonata took wing at an almost wicked clip. Here, if there is any room for reservation, Ms. Nguyen might have allowed for just a hairbreadth more tonal solidity and breathing space to make the most of this extremely Beethovenian writing. But, no matter, the potentially quirky crossing of hands and such were admirably under rhythmic control (no Schnabel-like desperation this time!). And how Ms. Nguyen’s spot-on sense of color and timing kept the potentially repetitious Con moto second movement airborne. (All of the myriad variations of filigree were splendidly creative and engaging and never once did interest flag). For once, there were no “editorializing” of rhythm in the Allegro vivace Scherzo (again that “Tradition” established almost reflexively by that famous old Schanbel recording), and in retrospect it was a pleasant and unpretentious departure from precedent. The Rondo: Allegro moderato, taken a bit more rapidly than usual, delectably recreated the nursery-rhyme “Sing a Song of Six Pence” quality in this fleet and lovely version.
And so it was with the Chopin group heard after intermission: the Fourth Scherzo had an almost Mendelssohn-like gossamer quality. Filigree was impishly tossed off, the octaves sonorously in place, and the central Trio section again achieved without fuss or contortion. The Nocturne was, if anything, even better: the absolute highpoint of the afternoon: I have never heard it played more eloquently, by Ignaz Friedman, Perahia, Horowitz, Rubinstein—or anyone whose interpretations linger in the mind’s ear. (Yes, this performance was truly sublime.) The Andante Spianato had a classical simplicity and proportion, and the following Grande Polonaise—a brilliance and swagger—with some effective left hand anticipations and octave amplifications making the proceedings all the more stylish and effective.
We will, no doubt, be regularly hearing much more from Quynh Nguyen: Remember her name!
She was my student at The Juilliard School for four years during which time she showed herself to be a wonderful young artist. She has impressive technical and musical assets, along with discipline and desire to develop herself. She made wonderful progress while studying with me and I look forward to watching her life as professional pianist evolve.Bella Davidovich Faculty, The Juilliard School