"British pianist Danny Driver showed how dazzling virtuosity can coexist with interpretive depth. His Tuesday night concert for San Francisco Performances tackled some of the most technically challenging works in the repertoire. While he catapulted confidently through reams of arpeggios, scales, and octave runs, he also avoided flashiness or superficiality. Rather, he played with crystalline precision, guiding the listener through structural intricacies and illuminating the connections between pieces with persuasive conviction." Read More...— Simon Cohen,
San Francisco Classical Voice
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Dynamic pianist Danny Driver sets a thrilling tone for memorable musical feast Read More...— Simon Thompson,
The Times (UK)
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‘He articulates the cross-rhythmic interplay of ‘Touches bloquées’ with the utmost independence from both hands and maintains a relaxed repartee between the left-hand scales and right-hand chords in ‘Fanfares’... Driver builds the central climax of ‘Arc-en ciel’ carefully and shades the gorgeous harmonies without milking them...The four Book 3 Études are no less detailed and vocally informed via Driver’s polished fingers and mindful musicianship. These qualities find a literary counterpart in the pianist’s informative, caring and well-written booklet notes. In essence, Driver’s Ligeti Études complement rather than compete with Aimard and Ullén, and that’s high praise.’ Read More...— Jed Distler,
Gramophone
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Driver’s recording of Ligeti’s virtuosity-testing Études is full of insight and exuberance. Read More...— Andrew Clements,
The Guardian
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The British pianist returns with an imaginative programme, gloriously played. Read More...— Jessica Duchen,
The Arts Desk
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What splendidly adventurous programming! Danny Driver has never once disappointed in my experience, and this being my first concert at the Wigmore Hall since before March, it was a delight to hear performances as radiant as these. Read More...— Colin Clarke,
Seen & Heard International
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Danny Driver may be the best pianist you’ve never heard. The British native, now in his early 40s, is one of the world-class artists who record for the prestigious UK record company Hyperion along with Marc-André Hamelin, Stephen Hough and Angela Hewitt among others. Read More...— Paul Ennis,
The Whole Note
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The two solo piano Barcarolles by Fauré that followed certainly restored the gravitas to the occasion. Barcarolle no. 4 in A flat major, Op.44 is a sunny work still dominated by the seductiveness of the composer’s early style. This was still the Fauré who had enchanted Proust and Hahn with his youthful glamour. However, by the time he wrote Barcarolle no. 5 in F sharp minor, Op.66 the intensity that increasingly characterises his later works is already apparent, making for a more complex piece full of unexpected modulations and cumulative passage work. Driver proved to be an ideal interpreter of these beautiful but technically and atmospherically difficult works, finding the just right balance between textural clarity and Romantic ardour. Read More...— Chris Garlick,
Bachtrack
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"There is never anything ostensibly showy about Driver’s playing, though he has a formidable technique at his disposal. His was an ultra-sensitive, classically restrained yet highly expressive response to the first movement’s opening mood of serenity, with superb articulation and a lovely tone quality. As the emotion of the music deepened, so did Driver’s range of expression expand, though in the most natural, sympathetic manner. He performed an unfamiliar cadenza which proved to be the seldom played second version written by the composer himself. Read More...— Alan Sanders,
Seen & Heard International
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"'The Amy Beach Concerto … is a big, virtuoso vehicle demanding great endurance and a bravura technique … Driver surmounts these demands with real artistry and, in the lovely slow movement, immense sensitivity" Read More...— Jeremy Nicholas,
Gramophone
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"JS Bach’s Fifth French Suite was full of personality, with ornamentation daringly abundant. There was a palpable sense of enjoyment of the physicality of Bach’s writing, particularly in the Courante and the irrepressible closing Gigue.
Driver is a fine colourist too, the theme of Schumann’s Études Symphoniques richly rendered. This is Schumann at his most unflaggingly virtuoso, and it’s a piece that can turn into a mere speed-fest in some hands. Driver’s focus was instead on elucidating the luxuriant textures and revealing the sheer imagination with which Schumann develops his theme..." Read More...— Harriet Smith,
Financial Times
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"Sunlight streamed through the crosshatch windows of Holy Trinity Church the next afternoon, when pianist Danny Driver gave an enthralling account of Ligeti’s first two books of Etudes and Debussy’s first two books of Images. Driver isn’t an overt colourist, and occasionally I missed touches of outright metal or flamboyance, but for someone who had never before performed the fearsome Ligeti pieces as a complete set, he was astoundingly cool: this was a performance of dauntless clarity, understated wit and graceful vitality." Read More...— Kate Molleson,
The Guardian (UK)
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"Miraculously, Driver appeared as relaxed at the end of this stupendous afternoon's playing as he had before beginning. Having mentioned Ligeti's assertion that playing the piano should be a physical pleasure he had certainly embodied that belief throughout this wonderfully conceived and stunningly executed programme. This was the most life-affirming concert I've attended in a long time." Read More...— Alan Coady,
Bachtrack
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'To hear in succession the tiny contemplative adagio of the Second Suite followed by its bright fugal allegro and then the quasi-improvisatory organ-like prelude of the Third Suite is to appreciate just how compellingly Driver intuits the music’s rich diversity.' Read More...— Geoffrey Norris,
The Daily Telegraph
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'If you want to hear these pieces played on a sleek grand piano using an engagingly post-historical approach, with flawlessly stylish ornamentation (eg the embellished vocalising line in the Sarabande from No 7) and a variety of dynamic nuances (the Chaconne in G major), then look no further.' Read More...— David Vickers,
Gramophone
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"Erik Chisholm's dazzling Second Piano Concerto and James MacMillan's arresting The Confession of Isobel Gowdie were among highlights of this Commonwealth Day concert....Driver's delivery was ideal: urgent, direct and unfussy, with touches of gentle eloquence and mysticism." Read More...— Kate Molleson,
The Guardian (UK)
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"One of the many children of JS Bach, CPE Bach is often overlooked. But this concert proved what an extraordinary and unsettling composer he was." Read More...— Ivan Hewett,
The Daily Telegraph
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'....Chloë Hanslip plays with the most enviably sweet and subtly variegated tone throughout and she forms an outstandingly compelling partnership with Danny Driver, whose irreproachably eager and stylish pianism is a joy to encounter...' Read More...— Andrew Achenbach,
Gramophone
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Danny Driver’s first foray into CPE Bach’s keyboard output was one of the most thrilling instrumental discs of 2010 and, once again, he proves an ideal guide to this repertoire....His impeccable technique is allied with the clarity of architectural vision crucial for making sense of this composer’s sophisticated challenges. Read More...— Clive Paget,
Limelight Magazine (Australia)
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"It was one of those instantly recognisable and humbling instances of a musician being entirely at the music’s disposal and therefore its master. Not only did he realise with perfect consistency the first movement’s spiritual anticipation of and dependency on the second movement, he also presented the process of detachment and transformation of the Arietta’s variations, the sense of letting go that defines the music, with a disarming modesty, directness and simple inevitability. " Read More...— Peter Reed,
The Classical Source
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'It would be difficult to over-praise this wonderfully enterprising disc....the superb Danny Driver gives his all'. Read More...— Bryce Morrison,
Gramophone
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The standout triumph was a blast from the past. Franz Reizenstein wrote his Concerto Popolare for Gerard Hoffnung’s first music festival in 1956; its soloist wanders from Grieg to Beethoven to Rachmaninov while the increasingly irate maestro insists on conducting Tchaikovsky..... Danny Driver’s pianist and Andrew Litton’s conductor were note-perfect impersonations of their preening archetypes. Read More...— Neil Fisher,
The Times (UK)
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Driver's performances, bold, exuberant and precise, were counterpointed not only by video projections, but with an actor. Andrew Stephen, in nerdy spectacles and a striped jumper, spent the performance seated at a 1980s computer, tapping out notes on the Studies and their starting points, from medieval Notre Dame composers to the tribal music of central Africa. Read More...— Andrew Clements,
The Guardian (UK)
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'Fascinating - two major British piano concertos that have nothing to do with the British musical mainstream. The music of the radical and visionary Scot, Erik Chisholm, has languished in obscurity for 50 years...' Hear excerpts and a discussion of this recording on the BBC Music Magazine podcast (iTunes or www.classical-music.com). Read More...— Calum Macdonald,
BBC Music Magazine
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On this album, CPE Bach: Keyboard Sonatas II, Danny Driver is intimately in touch with the fluctuations of the musical language, writes Geoffrey Norris - 'Driver plays with an imagination and subtlety fully equal to Bach’s own.' Read More...— Geoffrey Norris,
The Daily Telegraph
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— Stephen Pritchard,
The Observer
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"the intensity and immediacy of this Wigmore Hall recital was something else – and more than justified the accumulating fuss being made of this fine musician." Read More...
— Peter Reed,
The Classical Source
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'His performance ranges from thundering rhetoric to a whispering sense of poetic delicacy and when you hear him, say, in Variation 2 from the slow movement, you become enthralled by a pianist of such magical warmth and finesse.' Read More...
— Bryce Morrison,
Gramophone
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'Driver's playing is always beautifully measured and marked by an exquisitely deft precision'. Read More...— Graham Lock,
International Piano
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'It would be impossible to over-estimate Driver's impeccable technique and musicianship, and also a warmth missing from Pletnev's earlier and razor-sharp recital (DG, 2/02). Moving from York Bowen to C P E Bach (and with Balakirev on the horizon), he clearly believes that variety is the spice of life. This is surely one of the finest of all recent keyboard issues and Hyperion's sound and presentation are ideal.' Read More...
— Bryce Morrison,
Gramophone
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