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WIENER ZEITUNG She has long been on the right road...Margarete Babinsky took a deep breath and showed endurance on the 24 Preludes from Shostakovich and Chopin. With a sure aim she built toward the moments of tension, spun the musical threads evenly and enduringly…at the same time she becomes a power lady and releases thundering chords. Musicality, technique, implementation of power, all are perfect…jubilation among the fans! WIENER ZEITUNG In the Brahms Hall of the Wiener Musikverein, Margarete Babinsky clearly revitalises the characteristics of the classic modern in the 24 Preludes from Shostakovich. It ranged from the irony in alienated harmonics to folk music triviality and to tender studies in sound. The artist showed throughout her fine sense of tone, but also the courage to decidedly re-sharpen the specific corners and edges of some pieces
…after the interval she turned to the 24 Preludes from Chopin...the result was an utterly appropriate and contemporary portrait of Chopin, which had powerful contours and emotional freshness...She moved technically with such sovereignty in both centuries…that at times she was able to allow the music to really carry her away, and beautifully gave witness her original musicality...
HUDEBNY ROZHLEDY The Austrian Cultural Forum invited to Prague the pianist Margarete Babinsky, who together with the performance of works from Beethoven and Mozart, made an exceptionally great impression with her rendition of the 24 Preludes by Shostakovich. She mastered not only the dangers that these works present to pianists, she also played with surprising philosophical and graceful contrapositions of changing moods with a colourful differentiation of various shades of the piano’s tone. I would be happy to hear her play with an orchestra in a large hall sometime in the future... WIENER ZEITUNG ...When somebody plays Mozart's C Major Sonata so cleverly and dynamically, so variably and still with such apparent naturalness, then that somebody has something of import to say about Mozart...That a virtuoso performance, in the truest sense of the word, "can be a game, is shown by the artist who showed that she took much pleasure in her Mozart, and with his variations "Ah, vous dirai je, Maman"... The grand piano was taken fully to its technical limits - strongly expressive, powerful in tone - with Rachmaninov. DIE PRESSE Margarete Babinsky is a young, self-assured pianist who leaves nothing to chance. When she turns to the keyboard it is always with measure and moderation and a great deal of conviction. Because first and foremost one hears a fresh and carefree approach to the work. In Mozart's C Major Sonata KV330, she quickly captivated the audience with a sharply defined emphasis. Above all in the quicker movements she played as if dancing on a flourishing meadow, she appeared almost boisterous...
Klassik heute These Rachmaninoff recordings raise, in the old-fashioned sense of critique, the demand for a beautiful, convincing test of talent...bearing in mind the technical and conceptive difficulties, which an arranger…faces. On CD 1 Margarete Babinsky shows a stirring degree of sense and the super-sensory for a typical, warming Rachmaninoff timbre...the winner of the 1999 Wiener Flötenuhr convincingly achieves the successive construction of tension between the middle part and the reprise of the G-minor Preludes op. 23...playing in collaboration with... Holger Busch, the couple handle the text with vigour as well as with lyricism…as Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire...
According to Fono-Forum in March 2002, this CD was number four in the Cappriccio Charts (February 2002)DIE PRESSE The young Viennese pianist Margarete Babinsky appears to have no problem in taking an excursion into the spheres of pictorial depiction: with astonishing power and fitness she sends her listener's through Mussorgsky's picture exhibition of sound - without a moment's respite. It deserves admiration and must count as a demonstration of her pianistic potential. Österreichische Musikzeitschrift Margarete Babinsky, instrumentally, mentally and organisationally master of the given task, has recorded the complete works for piano by Egon Wellesz on three enthralling CDs. Compiled here is a fullness of predominantly thoughtful, in the next moment dance-like, then again of literary pertinence (Stefan George), study-like, sketchy works from the period between 1909 and 1969. It is the long-overdue retrospective of works of the greatest worth and unobtrusive virtuosity of which there has been hardly a counterpart in the Austrian piano literature of the 20th century.
(Peter Cosse)As Chambermusician: Stephen N. Dennis, America - Rachmaninov, Piano work Anyone who says he likes piano music but does not adore the piano music of Rachmaninov probably has a tin ear. Anyone who admires the piano music of Rachmaninov but does not exult in the dense harmonies of the Suite No. 2 of 1901 is probably uninformed. And anyone who has not heard the magisterial recording of this Suite by Austrian pianists Margarete Babinsky and Holger Busch is missing magnificent and even awesome power at the keyboard. There are already several recordings of the Suite (including those in which the pianists are Martha Argerich and Alexandre Rabinovitch for Teldec, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Andre Previn for London or Cynthia Raim and David Allen Wehr for the Connoisseur Society). But the Suite may not be well known to concert audiences, as it demands two exceptional pianists to cope with the mere physical requirements of the music, well before the emotional raptures are brought under even minimal control.
Babinsky and Busch bring a visceral excitement to the music in their definitive performance. It would be possible to drift toward the lush insignificant romanticism of Mantovani when playing this music, but there is an inner demonic tension which Babinsky and Busch never forget. As musical historians point out, Rachmaninov had only recently recovered from a three-year "dry" period in which he could not compose at all, and his personal excitement is evident in the Suite.
Babinsky has now issued two CDs of the music of Rachmaninov, one combining the Suite No. 2 with the Six Pieces of Opus 11 and the other in which she plays alone. The second CD is filled mainly with Babinsky's interpretation of the Corelli Variations, though two Preludes, two Moments Musical, a Melodie and the Polichinelle accompany the Variations. Babinsky plays with total confidence and a physical dexterity which makes the intricate complexities of Rachmaninov's harmonies a mere preliminary challenge to a total comprehension of the underlying emotional fever that is so essential to Rachmaninov's music.
KRONEN ZEITUNG
Florian KrenstetterBrahms Hall: with Astor Piazzolla’ “Grand Tango” and Beethoven’s Variations to “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen”, the cellist Wolfgang Panhofer and the pianist Margarete Babinsky set the mood for an evening full of atmosphere. With Rainer Bischof’s first performance of “Mangoldiana”, the soloists showed their rich range of feeling and interplay of colour. They realised Bischof’s “linguistics”, his tonal language, with great expression. Leos Janacek’s “Fairy Tale” was rendered with great passion.
The Brahms E-minor Sonata (Op. 38) was the highpoint. Panhofer’s playing is marked by a slender, intensive cello tone, perfect technique and lyrical intensity. As with Babisnky, power and intensity is never confused with false pathos. And Babinsky never uses the full texture of Brahms’s piano writing to dominance.
WIENER ZEITUNG
Brahms-Saal: Wolfgang Panhofer, Margarete BabinskyInner Quiet and Vitality
By Herbert Müller...Wolfgang Panhofer, brilliantly accompanied by Margarete Babinsky, began with Astor Piazzolla’s “Le Grand Tango” and proved his unerring feeling for what is atmospheric in this multifaceted but nevertheless somewhat long-winded music.
Things then “got serious” with Beethoven’s Variations to “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen” from the “Magic Flute” by Mozart. Panhofer skilfully tossed all of his artistic experience onto the scales in this tonally transparent work. Elegant bowing and assured intonation were further outstanding merits, to which was added a great deal of inner quiet, a characteristic that the perfectly disposed Margarete Babinsky aga countered with her temperament.Musicality to a high degree was then demanded for the first performance of the evening, the work of variations, “Mangoldiana”, by Rainer Bischof. Panhofer and Babinsky mastered the artistic splits between expressiveness and lyric in a convincing way: technically virtuoso and precise in expression. Leos Janacek’s “Fairy Tale” gave both artists the opportunity for atmospheric enthusiasm and lyricism realised in a beautiful tone. Here too the interplay of Panhofer’s pensiveness and Babinsky’s vitality was a special delight.
The grand, crowning conclusion took place with the E-minor Sonata by Brahms. It was also here that Panhofer’s great technical sovereignty was again felt. Margarete Babinsky contributed her musical optimism in her customary artistic way.
„Der Neue Merker“ (February 2007 edition)
Now already among the highly esteemed piano interpreters (above all of Schubert and Chopin), the talented Austrian Margarete B a b i n s k y also plays on the 2 CD collection of Shostakovich’s piano pieces those solo works that are hardly known. In the four-handed pieces on the second CD she is joined by her precise, technically perfect, adaptable colleague Holger B u s c h. A fascinating team! Babinsky, who with her Mozart CD (Piano Sonatas K 330 – 332 and 265) in 2003 paid an enchanting Mozart homage in advance of the 2006 Amadé Memorial Year (Delta Music 18 3o3), excites the greatest admiration in her method of interpreting a composer in a completely new way, and to such an extent that one can consider the interpretation to be authentic. Following the circle of fifths, created in the years 1932/33, the so stylistically different and individual 24 Preludes (Op. 34) by Shostakovich also reveals together with virtuoso technique Babinsky’s sensitive versatility. Those interested in the little- known piano music by the symphonist Shostakovich, who suffered greatly in the Soviet Union under Stalin (highly distinguished and deeply despised), will definitely have to have this musical pleasure!
A.W.SZABADSAG ...The playing of the two artists was marked by technical assuredness, rhythmic precision and unique sensitivity, which moved the audience deeply...The unusual pair of artists offered the highest performance in every piece throughout the evening. HERMANNSTÄDTER ZEITUNG Throughout the entire evening Margarete Babinsky and Wolfgang Panhofer showed their high class and artistic personalities with an elegant and refined musical performance. They felt perfectly at home in the lyrical passages, which made possible for them the realisation of effective pianissimi and melodic lines, which in turn delighted the audience in the scores so full of virtuosity in which they displayed perfect technique. Their precise interplay ensured a successful evening... GESELLSCHAFT DER MUSIKFREUNDE The cellist Bernhard Vogl is accompanied by a young pianist with an already prominent name: Margarete Babinsky. When one asks Bernhard Vogl about her qualities as an accompanist, he is utterly enthusiastic: she is finely strung, animating and really feels with one in unison. With her, the musical dialogue works just perfectly. „Der Neue Merker“ Großer Musikvereins-Saal: Vladimir Fedosejev stood at the rostrum before the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and first accompanied Margarete Babinsky in Weber's Concerto in F Minor, in which the young lady - from among a throng of young Austrian talent - gave witness to her enormous technique, which is a thing quite natural among the young lions. To display such an enjoyment of playing music was not difficult under Fedosejev's fatherly guidance. [top]
