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“Rorianne gave a stunning recital that featured the Chopin Op. 25 Etudes
... and music by living composers on the 2nd, including 2 pieces composed for her, with one of the composers present...”
© 2008 Classical Voice of New England, Inc.
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Headline: Rorianne Schrade Impeccable in Sevenars
Solo Concert
“Rorianne Schrade ... award-winning pianist, took on a program of mostly modern piano works,
each offering its own distinctions...utterly precise articulation which coaxes every drop of sound from each note...Her impeccable
technique collaborated with the hall again in Samuel Barber’s monumental Sonata...it was the larger works, the Barber
and the Gershwin, with which Schrade appeared most comfortable ...Schrade with her versatility treated the Sevenars audience
to a concert that tastefully blended the intense with the light, the somber with the whimsical, and the legendary with the
local”
(All 20th Century program)
Eric Weld, The Hampshire Gazette (MA)
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Headline: Pianist Superb with Demanding Recital
“In four Strauss Waltz paraphrases,
pianist Rorianne Schrade played enough notes on the first half of her Sevenars solo recital Sunday to exhaust two pianists
in two concerts. Apparently tireless and possessed of infinite emotional depths, she went on after a brief intermission to
play a heartfelt, magically tender account of Mozart’s Sonata K.282 in E-flat Major, and finished with Schubert’s
towering ‘Wanderer Fantasy.’
‘Rori’ negotiated the Allegro con Fuoco’s heroic chords
and sweeping arpeggios with the dry lucidity of Horowitz, plumbed the Adagio’s melancholy depths, delivered a breakneck
Presto, and plunged with undiminished intensity into the fugal opening of the closing Allegro. The explosive conclusion of
the piece rocketed her audience to its feet.”
C. Noble, Union News, Springfield, MA
*******
“There is something analogous about this dynasty of New York pianists to the celebrated Trapp family singers...
Robelyn and Rorianne have been successfully making their mark pianistically (I glowingly reviewed Rorianne’s Weill
Hall concert in the pages of this journal)...the first half ended with the Copland-Bernstein El Salon Mexico bitingly and
energetically rendered by Rorianne and Randolph.”
(Schrade Family Two Piano Concert, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln
Center NY)
Harris Goldsmith, New York Concert Review
*******
“This was an engaging
and formidable program ... endless energy...technical bravura...the success of this performance was not rooted just in the
technical capacity and sheer energy of the performer (brilliance alone would not have sufficed); it was also rooted in Ms.
Schrade’s ability to musically shape the piece [Glazunov Sonata in Bb minor], in individual phrases as well as in overall
architectural line.”
J. Royal, New York Concert Review
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Headline: Schrade Concert
Dazzles Audience
“Dazzling concertgoers with blazing technical skill and captivating them with vulnerable emotional
depth...Schrade’s potent mastery of the keyboard-spanning, strength-sapping virtuoso textures brought to mind the playing
of Horowitz ... Schrade keeps alive and, in a sense reinvents a venerable tradition of heroic virtuoso performers born in
the Liszt-Paganini era of the late 19th century and stretching into the twentieth century with the likes of Paderewski, Rachmaninov,
and their contemporaries.”
Union-News, Springfield, MA.
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“Delectable flair...a
communicativeness that I do not remember having heard...a sensual quality I would not have thought possible [in Rachmaninoff's
B-flat minor Sonata] ...nuance and flexibility that had this listener thinking of Rachmaninoff’s own recordings...It
is rather unusual to encounter a ‘throwback’ and to discover a player who embraces the values of a seemingly long-vanished
pianistic style.”
Harris Goldsmith, New York Concert Review
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Headline: Music
Lovers Win the Shell Game:
“Rorianne Schrade was the exciting young soloist...strength and stamina to burn... she
found whatever poetry and sentiment the piece contains and drew a fine variety of tonal shades from the instrument, thundering
resonance, a penetrating singing tone, harp-like effects and velvety light scales and arpeggios... She frolicked through the
scherzo and tore through the finale like a whirlwind unleashed.”
(Saint-Saens Concerto No. 2, New Orchestra
of Westchester) Gannett Westchester Newspapers
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“First class talent in my (not so) humble opinion...”
“...a magnetic lyricism...personal
and idiomatic, yet not self-indulgent or sentimental. She honors the composer with devotion to the score...the sweep of demonic
grandeur [Liszt's Mephisto Waltz] was most persuasive...”
“Powerhouse performance...stunning."
Jurors, Concert Artists Guild
International Competition
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“Schrade blew into town on a rainy afternoon yesterday and scattered
ideas across the hall like thunderbolts...a lavish romantic intensity...beautifully sculpted phrases...melting and utterly
natural lyrical grace...”
Andrew Pincus, Berkshire Eagle
(MA.)
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“...fabulous...she plays with total immersion in the music...Everything was appropriate;
right tempos, lyric phrasing. Rorianne Schrade struck the happy medium interpretively, avoiding both affectation and excessive
rubato."
Daily Hampshire Gazette (MA.)
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“The young soloist displayed elegant
phrasing and a wide variety of articulation...”
(Beethoven Concerto No.1 with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Woolsey Hall)
The New Haven Register (CT.)
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“A brilliantly played program of piano music...sensitivity and fervor...beautiful and dramatically satisfying...superb
pianism...”
Garden City News (N.Y.)
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“A vixen and an elf at the keyboard..
She plays with the fire of the very young and with the insight of an artist mature far beyond her years...there were no runs
too fast for her, no powerful attacks beyond her strength, nor yet any whispered lines outside of her concept. A wild range
of expressiveness...”
E. Wayne, Berkshire Eagle (MA.)
*******
“She played with
a beautiful, velvety tone...her sense of color was subtle and dramatic. The judges looked charmed as she played. She played
with wit, passion, and grace. Extended applause followed the concerto. Repeated ‘Bravos’...”
Talk
of the Town section, The New Yorker
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“...agile, intensely musical performances, percolating
with youthful optimism...the Schrades’ fragrant supple interpretation was a beauty.”
(In Duo-piano combination with
Robert and Randolph Schrade)
The New York Times
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“...thorough, forceful, and cogent...she demonstrated a keen ear for
sonority, plenty of temperament, and a fine sense of architecture.”
The Plain Dealer, Cleveland
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“...an accomplished and attractive musician...Her control
of balances and sensitivity to color in Messiaen's "Sons Impalpables du reve" and her clarity of contrapuntal voicing
in the first movement of Chopin's B minor Sonata were thoroughly admirable.”
The New York Times
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“...inside the Academy, the air is full of music. Rorianne, the Schrades’
twenty-something younger daughter, is at the piano... in the “Tombeau de Couperin” by Ravel. The execution is
better than flawless. It is inspired.”
The Berkshire Eagle (MA.)
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“Rorianne Schrade's performance took off like a rocket with
the Wedding March and Variations by Mendelssohn-Liszt-Horowitz. Her performance projected an ease of virtuosic style that
looked back to the previous century… The balance of the program was dedicated to American composers. John Newell's
Variations on "Amazing Grace" is a moving set of variations based on the well known hymn and lovingly played by
Ms Schrade . Rolande Schrade's Acorn #4 is a charming piece in the spirit of Ravel that fit in well with the program. The
finale to the first half was a colossal performance of the Barber Piano Sonata. This music continues to haunt the psyche with
its blending of 19th century lyricism and 20th century cold , atonal objectivity. Ms Schrade's headlong performance brought
both elements together in an electrifying interpretation. The second part of the program continued the American theme with
a small Sonatina by local composer Clifton Noble Jr. It's straightforward language and form were deftly rendered by Ms Schrade's
playing The program ended with a solo version of the Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue as arranged by the composer This tour de force
was clearly relished by Ms Schrade. She brought out all of the complicated inner voices that a such a distilled arrangement
would provide. Bravo to Ms Schrade”
Thomas Slowick, www.inthespotlightinc.org
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“...an outstanding pianist and musician...an outstanding technique and a large centered and colored sound...a conductor’s
dream.”
Paul Dunkel, conductor
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“Even with a bulky cast on her broken right wrist, Rorianne Schrade is capable of some of the finest
piano playing heard anywhere. ..Rorianne Schrade’s account of it [Felix Blumenthal’s Op. 36 for the left hand]
was extraordinary--she exhibited sense of line and command of tone color and voicing possessed by only a few of the world’s
finest pianists.”
The Union -News, Springfield (MA.)
This performance was also included in the Union
critic’s top ten roundup for the year.
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“You won’t get many chances this good
to get acquainted with an attractive Russian composer [Balakirev] who stubbornly refused to publish much of his music until
late in life...Islamey, perhaps the greatest fingerbreaking challenge in all the literature for piano, is given a bravura
performance by Schrade.”
Classical Disc Digest,
Vol.4, No.5
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“In presenting an album of works by the little known Russian composer Mily
Balakirev (1837-1910), pianist Rorianne Schrade has found the perfect vehicle for dislaying her tremendous depth of expressiveness
and virtuosity...The pianist’s range is stunning, equally expressive in the stark, quiet passages and the wild, impossible
sounding rhythmic sections...Thankfully, Balakirev exemplifies how Ms. Schrade’s piano artistry and her own self-discipline
and commitment to her art can satisfy our longing for natural beauty and release.”
Paul Burton, Bravo Newspaper
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Headline: Rorianne Schrade: Stunning Pianist:
“....absolutely
magnificent. She manifested a beautiful blend of strength and sensitivity which enabled her to express a full range of feeling,
from tremendous ower to sublime tenderness, all the while commanding the piano with prodigious technical skill...Rorianne
Schrade immediately grabbed our undivided attention by plunging directly into the massive opening chords of Busoni’s
piano arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chaconne in D Minor, without any of the usual fiddling around with the
seat, etc., and held us spellbound for the rest of the concert.
[The Waltz from Gounod’s Faust] is a typically
Lisztian virtuoso composition which almost seems to demand the impossible from the artist, but Schrade came through with rip-snorting
victory. Her hands were all over the keyboard, and her fingers flew miraculously through runs, arpeggios, and trills, and
yet she was able to shift gears instantly to a tranquil treatment of the smooth middle section.
The second half
of the concert was
made up entirely of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme by Chopin, Op. 22...She was
virtually alone with the music and the piano, and yet we were privileged to intrude just enough to see and hear her play.”
C. Pottol, Daily Hampshire Gazette
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Headline: Schrade delights at Sevenars:
“She draws crowds of loyal and enthusiastic admirers
---and an admiring press as well...a master pianist ... A listener, on learning that I am a critic, aptly remarked “you
must be running out of adjectives”
E. Hafner,
Daily Hampshire Gazette
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“..limpid ornaments of infinite delicacy... Schrade’s articulation
was clean as a whistle, light and crisp through demanding passagework...her consummate artistry ran through the performance
like a golden thread. Her attention to tone and color never knuckled under to even the most difficult passages [in “Islamey”]”
The Union -News, Springfield (MA.)
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