"Touch, temperament, flair, touch, technique - you name it, Mr Block has it.

Donal Henahan, Chicago Daily News
 

"Here is a recording [Albeniz's Iberia] that not only challenges De Larrocha's supremacy, but topples it. Block's playing has an earthy swagger and poetic sweep that the lady from Barcelona cannot match."

Time
 

"Breathtakingly poetic"

The Times (London)
 

"Centuries of European Culture seem to have culminated in the heart and mind of Michel Block"

Algemeen Handelsblad, Amsterdam
 

"Sensational piano evening! A brilliant and moving pianist."

Neue Zuricher Zeitung, Zurich
 

"The big news of the evening was the return to New York …of Michel Block. One of the musical underground's great favorites he proved he indeed should be better known than he is. Throughout the evening his playing was simply dazzling. His part in Beethoven's Choral Fantasy had perfect sparkle, and he gave Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand everything its curious mixture of nobility and acidity demands. Moreover I've never heard the long, fiendish final cadenza sound so easy."

Bill Zakariasen, New York Daily News
 

"Extraordinary!"

Corriere de la Sera, Milan
 

"With so many records by so many pianists…it is reasonable to ask why his CDs are important. Fortunately, this is not a difficult question to answer. Above all there is his sound. It always was one of the most pliable and molten among pianists and the passing years have made it even more beautiful and one-of-a-kind. There is a mellow, aged-in-wood character to his playing that few approach and none surpasses. …With Mr Block, playing the piano is not simply a question of tonal sensuality, warmth and luster, but how to turn these qualities to eloquent ends. He has a rare lyric sensibility and a probing manner that reaches deeply into the core of a piece of music…. To put it simply, no one else today colors music as he does or sees it in such personal terms. His dynamic and expressive range is prodigious…"

John Ardoin, The Dallas Morning News.
 

"He is among the great virtuosi, a phenomenon of the keyboard"

Swiat, Warsaw
 

"The best performances of the night came from Michel Block… the Beethoven Choral Fantasy was purled through with dashing aplomb and the Ravel Left Hand Concerto had even more panache and sonority than usual. But he is more than just a virtuoso - a fully mature, convincing artist who seems to have plenty to say.

John Rockwell, The New York Times
 

"Words cannot describe how sublime this performance is. That Mr. Block… achieves such extraordinary fluency is only a bonus. Inflection and intonation are the capital of his pianistic profile... Mr. Block finds an uncanny balance between intensity and passivity, between rhetoric and song. What's more, the limitless variety of color and the astonishing seamlessness of his playing give way to a kind liquid sculpture in molten mercury. In Michel Block one finds that rare combination of audacity and refinement, rhetoric and poetry…He is a storyteller par excellence, an aristocrat in whom the fullness of ancient and modern traditions seems to exhaust itself. And yet, while he paints in sound, he also speaks in it; he elaborates a work's idiosyncratic punctuation, conveying its tenuous commas, its telling semi-colons, definitive periods and defiant exclamation points. Few pianists interiorize a work's immanent dramas with such authority, allowing them to smolder so transparently under expertly crafted surfaces

John Bell Young, The American Record Guide
 

"He played gorgeously…he captured Carnegie Hall with a brilliant solo recital that left few aspects of his musicianship unexplored…Block stands apart from most musicians of his generation…the music had shape and it breathed. The pianist's superb sense of tone color was well engaged.. Marvelous piano color in a wonderfully sonorous projection of the Liszt Funerailles

Alan Rich, New York Herald Tribune
 

"He is a giant…there is something of Josef Hofmann about him. These are unerring fingers, backed by prodigious strength and a mind suffused by poetry. He made the piano talk; more important, he made it sing."

Louis Biancolli, New York World-Telegram
 

"….Talent to burn. [Block] plainly has something to say and the means to say it. His tone is full of colors and rich in moods, even in the capricious. The Schubert sang to remind you to remind you of Schnabel or Fischer"

Claudia Cassidy, Chicago Tribune
 

"Block plays his chosen selection [Chopin mazurkas] to perfection. Such is his mastery that he gives the impression that he is improvising on the spot. His mastery of rubato is absolute, his tone ravishing. Even a young master like Evgeny Kissin has much to learn from these performances."

Allan Linkowski, The American Record Guide
 

"A most extraordinary recital…Block, whose range of dynamics and gradations of tone seemed inexhaustible, is one of those rare souls who can make a piano sing. He spoke the Beethoven as if it were his native tongue, effortlessly and with the variety of accent and phrase that marks the eloquent speaker. Block played with that mixture of clarity of idea and subtlety of expression to which only the master pianist can aspire…Everything was carried off with a marvelous panache, and with an absolute refusal to cheapen the music…Block touched Liszt's Funerailles with a dark restraint that was perfect. … Mark Senor Block as one of the few pianists who understand Spanish music from the heart out…

Donal Henahan Chicago Daily News
 

"Mr Block perhaps most resembles Arthur Rubinstein in style. ..he has a miraculous finger technique and a superfine ear for beauty of sound. Moreover he is a poet to the core. Mr Block found ravishing new shades of tone color…His tonal palette was even more bewitching in Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit, played with a perfectly judged balance between melody and shimmering accompaniment …In three pieces from Albeniz's Iberia there were artful contrasts of dry and liquid tone - alongside those of rhythmic languor and tension - to produce the authentic flavor.

Joan Chissell, The Times (London)
 

Es gehort auch Chupze dazu zum ersten Mal mit den Berliner Philharmoniken zu spielen und sein Pianistengluck dann nicht beiden Klavierfaussten anzuvertrauen, sondern der linken Hand allein. Michel Block... debutierte in der Philharmonie mit Ravels konzert fur die linke Hand allein. Michel Block wurde solchen angorderungen des Konzerts mit einer Brillianz gerecht, die sich keine der Pointen entgeben liess und dennoch die spezifische eigentumlich glaserde Grazie der Ravelschen Sprechweise bewahrte. Fine Wiedergabe des Werkes war zu bewundern die nicht nur Perfektion, sonder Meisterschaft, musikalische Souveranitat atmete.

Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin
 

Reflections of a complex man: New discs unveil Michel Block's uniquely expressive style

"What about Michel Block, another exceptional artist who no longer performs in public? His career was dramatically launched in 1960 in the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, Poland where he was awarded a special prize by juror Arthur Rubinstein, who was miffed that the young artist did not win. He made his first records for Deutsche Grammophon and later recorded for EMI. But he too, [like Glenn Gould], became dissatisfied with his life as a concert artist, chiefly because of the compromises requires as the art of music became more and more the business of music. He began curtailing his appearances… Now he is back, not live but on disc…With so many records by so many pianists, most of them far better known than Mr Block because of their continued presence inn out concert halls, it is reasonable to ask why his CDs are important. Fortunately, this is not a difficult question to answer. Above all there is his sound. It always was one of the most pliable and molten among pianists and the passing years have made it even more beautiful and one-of-a-kind…there is a mellow, aged-in-wood character to his playing that few approach and none surpasses. That alone would make his pianism of interest, But with Mr Block, playing the piano is not simply a question of tonal sensuality, warmth and luster, but how to turn these qualities to eloquent ends. He has a rare lyric sensibility and a probing manner that reaches deeply into the core of a piece of music to reveal its architectural foundations and its expressive core. To put it simply, no one else today colors music as he does or sees it in such personal terms. His dynamic and expressive range is prodigious, and there are things on his discs that will excite you, some that will puzzle you and others that could even make you angry. ..Mr Block makes you think about the character of the music he is playing and why he plays it as he does. That alone, in an age of generally faceless music making, makes his records worth searching out. "There will be little controversy sparked by his playing of music by Manuel de Falla, Enrique Granados and Albeniz. His way is ideal - these are sounds and ideas deeply rooted within him, and he responds to Latin music with utter naturalness. Much the same could be said of his playing of gems by Debussy, Schubert and Mendelssohn on his encore disc…. "But there is no mistaking that there is a strong viewpoint at work here, and that the performances are being shaped by it. Whether you like what results or not is incidental. What matters is that a new window is being opened onto the music, and we are being asked to look out and consider the view. This amounts to a creative act worth attention….Our horizons have been lengthened and that is what a major artists is all about."

John Ardoin, The Dallas Morning News, August 18, 1991
 
 

GRANADOS: Goyescas
ProPiano 224518  :  52 minutes

Words cannot describe how sublime this performance is. Were the work Russian, Michel Block could easily be dubbed Nicholas to Alicia de Larrocha's Alexandra. (In the current climate of cutbacks and catalog deletions, let's hope the recording industry never does to them, metaphorically speaking, what the Bolsheviks did to the Romanovs). Where Granados and Albeniz are concerned, all other pianists are simply court functionaries kowtowing in their interpretive shadows. Given their status in the musical Diaspora, I suppose that's a good thing; both are benevolent monarchs who never fail to publicly praise the interpretive efforts of inferior colleagues. Even so, for reasons that puzzle me, Ms. De Larrocha's international celebrity has for too long eluded this no less great pianist.

That Mr. Block, who rose to prominence in 1960 after winning the first Arthur Rubinstein prize at the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, achieves such extraordinary fluency is only a bonus. Inflection and intonation are the capital of his pianistic profile. Indeed, in many ways his playing brings to mind Schnabel and Gilels, though in technical categories he is perhaps even more reliable and pristine. It's not simply that he is capable of delivering a nearly note perfect public performance (this disc was recorded in concert at the University of Indiana in 1981), but that he does so without compromising an iota of the work's immanent concept. Mr. Block finds an uncanny balance between intensity and passivity, between rhetoric and song. What's more, the limitless variety of color and the astonishing seamlessness of his playing give way to a kind liquid sculpture in molten mercury. Mr. Block is proof positive that a musician, as Schnabel (or was it Cortot?) once said, is only as good as his transitions.

From the upward spiral that introduces the flirtatious Los Requiebros, Mr. Block sends us spinning into Granados's luxurious world of crackling castanets and nimble entanglements. Here, Mr. Block manipulates the litany of florid triplets that ornament it with the consummate skill of a dashing swashbuckler, rapier in hand, defending the honor of some sordid seniorita awash in black satin lace. But subtlety prevails: here the swordsman is a lover, and the seniorita a bride to be; the steel edge doesn't pierce its subject as much as it caresses it, at once reflecting then melting the seductress's icy stares. Mr. Block brings much of the same playful vivacity and idiomatic savoir-faire to Coloquio en la Reja; the limpid flourishes that undulate so unerringly through its sad song reverberate with unfulfilled desires and veiled longings. In Mr. Block's hands, the jaunty El Fandango de Candil sautes and shimmers persuasively, while the coquettish Quejas, o la Maja e el Ruisenor weeps quietly en route to the nightingale's song that draws it to a close. But it is in El Amor y la Muerte that Mr. Block pulls out the stops, lending its ambivalent, sanguiferous melisma and tortuous trajectory an uneasy prescience and heartbreaking ardency. If there is a piece de resistance here, it is surely the concluding epilogue, Serenata del Espectro an evocation of the gallant that comes to life in the context of Mr. Block's sultry, subcutaneous and endlessly flexible rubato.

In Michel Block one finds that rare combination of audacity and refinement, rhetoric and poetry. But in his playing, even more is at work: he is a storyteller par excellence, an aristocrat in whom the fullness of ancient and modern traditions seems to exhaust itself. And yet, while he paints in sound, he also speaks in it; he elaborates a work's idiosyncratic punctuation, conveying its tenuous commas, its telling semi-colons, definitive periods and defiant exclamation points. Few pianists interiorize a work's immanent dramas with such authority, allowing them to smolder so transparently under expertly crafted surfaces.

Speaking of surfaces, the recorded ones here are unusually clear for a concert disc. That's a blessing in light of the shallow sounding piano Mr. Block was evidently compelled to use in this academic setting. Given the instrument's limitations, it's a miracle he finds the colors he does. Electronically induced compression and over-equalization compromise climactic moments, which is certainly no fault of the pianist, whose palette of tone colors is preternaturally rich. But such instruments and recording techniques, while typical for a university, are no match for Mr. Block's eloquence and spiritual largesse, which in any event transcend them.

John Bell Young, The American Record Guide

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