"SooJin Anjou offers a dream recital" - 

Last Sunday, in a hall packed to the brim, the Korean pianist SooJin Anjou performed a recital dedicated entirely to dreams, poetry and fantasy.  In fact, she went far beyond the feat of simply playing her instrument very well, and swept us away with Debussy, Chopin, Szymanowski, Liszt, and particularly Medtner, onto poetic and fantastical paths.  A superb and inspired pianist, she let her heart and her imagination speak in front of a conquered audience.  

                                                                                 MAG' CENTRE (FRANCE)            

                        SooJin Anjou’s performance at the Schlosstheater was convincing in its impressive tonal variety, sensitive nuances,            comforting clarity and refreshing mastery.  Anjou’s sense for the diverse characters of the variations went hand in hand with a sure-footed balance between head and heart.

                                                                                           Fuldaer Zeitung (Germany)

Her program showed extraordinary sensitivity to subtle relationships among the works … Mozart Sonata K.332, Ravel’s Sonatine, Godowsky’s moody and whimsical paraphrase of tunes from Die Fledermaus, Messiaen’s otherwordly short piece La Colombe, Albéniz’s exotic Triana, and finally one of Ravel’s finest works, Le Tombeau de Couperin - all played with impressive technique, insight and nuance by this extraordinary young woman. Her performance of Le Tombeau de Couperin showed the highest mastery, revealing aspects of the work I never knew existed. With SooJin Anjou’s sharply etched technique, the more delicate passages never lost their strength and rigor, and she did full justice to the grander passages, never compromising the basic lucidity of her playing.                 

                                                                                          BERKSHIRE REVIEW  (USA)

SooJin Anjou … has excellent technique at her disposal, which she fully demonstrated in a ferociously difficult program including Rachmaninov, Beethoven and Brahms. Moreover, she performed a small musical miracle with the Sonata in G by Domenico Scarlatti: here was a light-footed dance of playful 16th-note motifs, scales cascading and bubbling upward clear as pearls, interlocking pianos and fortes weaving excitedly in and out of one another. One was reminded of the playing of the legendary Harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick … in the Bach, the independent thought-process of the pianist was evident. In the Rachmaninov etudes, she did the virtuoso composition full justice.

Passauer Neue Presse (Germany)

 

The Korean pianist SooJin Anjou received enormous applause for her masterly, soloistic performance of the highest rank.

Blick (Germany)

Sophisticated and virtuosic, as well as sensitive and expressive, SooJin Ahn stirred the audience with Felix Mendelssohn’s Prelude and Fugue: and in absolute contrast, ripped through Ligeti’s "L’escalier du diable", a work of the highest difficulty that requires complete mastery of the instrument.

Vogtland-Anzeiger (germany)

         acclaim for theater projects

The real star of the play is, on the other hand, the pianist SooJin Anjou, seated inconspicuously at the edge of the stage. Her part has not only the most interesting text -namely Beethoven’s notes-, it is what gives meaning to the whole concept of ‘theater as education’. That is especially true for the scenes in the Beethoven-Haus, where Katherine discovers the sketches to the Variations… When Anjou plays them on the piano, one has the feeling that one is hearing how the music came into being in Beethoven’s head.

TAZ 

 

Musical director and first-class pianist: SooJin Anjou.

                                                                                  Ossietzky 

 

SooJin Anjou provides musical magic at the piano.                                          

    Märkische Oderzeitung 

 

… a successful tragicomedy with very funny moments, which remains moving to the end, much to the credit of the outstanding cast. The great effort required to mix the two time periods and the many strands of the play on, before, behind and above the stage is sometimes clearly noticeable. However, the acting itself remains effortless at all times, just like the live interpretations of the Variations by the pianist SooJin Anjou.

BERLINER MORGENPOST 

… all the composers oblige, except that Beethoven goes overboard and, after several years, produces the eponymous 33 Diabelli Variations, the most important piano work of its kind along with Bach’s Goldberg Variations. SooJin Anjou performs them on the piano, and these are the most beautiful moments in the play.

Tagesspiegel