Reviews
“Christina Petrowska Quilico…exhibits enormous strength, stamina and an amazingly crisp, clean articulation.” – Art Lange, Fanfare Magazine, reviewing Mystic Streams
“She has a remarkably luminous tone that draws the listener to the music in a way that not many pianists can manage.” – American Record Guide, reviewing Northern Sirens
“Petrowska Quilico is …an excellent musician, technically skillful and interpretively sound. She knows her way through the thorny thickets of Messiaen, Boulez, and the other contemporary composers, delivering their strange rhythms and discords effectively. I’m particularly taken by hearing the eerie sounds of the Boulez sonata again.” – American Record Guide, July/August 2003, reviewing Gems with an Edge
“The playing here is far more sensitive and responsive than anything I have heard.”– The Ottawa Citizen, Jacob Siskind, reviewing Debussy & Messiaen
3 Concerti (Piano concerti by Violet Archer, Larysa Kuzmenko and Alexina Louie – Centrediscs CMCCD 15610, 2010)
“I review another of Quilico’s Centrediscs releases in this issue (Ann Southam’s Pond Life), and what I wrote there about her attention to tonal color also applies here. These three concertos also allow her to show off her pianistic muscles, however, and she has plenty to show off. Her playing is as tough and assertive as the repertoire). This is a fine addition to her discography, and I hope we will continue to hear much more from this pianist-in both familiar and unfamiliar repertoire-in coming years. Recommended!” – Raymond Tuttle, Fanfare Magazine
“Christina Petrowska Quilico plays all of this music with vivid brio, always finding a lucid textural balance with the orchestra. Her rock-steady rhythmic pulse and palpable enthusiasm seem to beg the listener to pay attention to the music, as if to say that none of this deserves obscurity.” – Peter Burwasser, Fanfare Magazine
“Pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico is the soloist on 3 Concerti, a disc which serves to remind us that there is a grand tradition of concerto writing in this country and begs the question – why are they so rarely played? Of the three, Louie’s is the most exotic…the work is a skilful and exuberant blending of East and West. Petrowska Quilico is in fine form with the National Arts Orchestra, under Alex Pauk….Kuzmenko is an unabashed Romantic whose model seems to be Rachmaninov, although here too I sense the influence of Bartok. The work is flamboyantly virtuosic and Petrowska Quilico takes full advantage of the opportunity to rise to the occasion. It is a well-crafted, dramatic work that would be well at home on any mainstream orchestral concert and, like others on this disc, deserves to be heard more often.” – David Olds, Whole Note/ Editors Corner
March 21, 2006
"The physical renaissance of Toronto culture isn't just happening
downtown...a case in point is the Recital Hall in what is called Accolade
East...Music department head Michael Coghlan's Accolade Fanfare for
Five Trumpets blew the audience's hair backward in a suitably exuberant
opening gesture. The evening ended with the world pemiere of Eclipse,
a concerto for piano, 10 instruments and voice by York alumnus David Mott.
Written in three movements that weave into each other, and conducted
by professor Mark Chambers, Eclipse was a showcase for considerable
talents of Christina Petrowska Quilico at the piano...There was a buzz
of anticipation in the scarlet-painted lobby before the gala began, and
there were even wider smiles afterward".- John Terauds, Toronto Star
May 6, 2005
"I like Christina
Petrowska Quilico's "go big or go home" attitude to the piano
recital, and was particularly happy to hear that she is performing Ann
Southam's complete Rivers cycle at the Music Gallery. Ot these
19 pieces of pattern music (often called minimalist), I knew only one
- the exhilirating No. 8 from Set 3 - thanks to Quilico's own performances
and recording of it.
Petrowska did an exceptionally beautiful job
of the slow pieces, I thought, casting a spell with her quiet, bell-like
sound. I also liked the strong, confident flow she gave not just to the
fast pieces, but also the slow fast ones.
Quilico arranged then in groups that provided
contrasts of tempos.
But during the last piece one felt, not a heroic
sense of arrival or a sense of triumph over adversity, as one would in
a traditional symphony, but a sense of piece in the journey itself. Although
this last piece - the final one of the cycle, in fact - was the longest,
I kept hoping it would never end.
Quilico's recording of Rivers, which includes
a radio documentary on Southam, is available on the Centerdiscs label;
(www.musiccentre.ca). -Tamara Bernstein, National Post
"Ms. Petrowska is a formidable force in the Canadian music scene…she
is truly a gifted pianist…a beautiful work (Catbird Seat) and a beautiful
performance.", greeted the release of a Trappist Recording of
music by David Jaeger, by Jan Press Publications. In a feature article
in Fanfare Record Magazine, Christina Petrowska Quilico was headlined
as a "Renaissance woman...and a part-time lounge lizard".
November 24, 2002
"In presenting Pierre Boulez with the triennial $50,000 Glenn Gould
Prize for service to music yesterday afternoon - appropriately enough
in the CBC's Glenn Gould Studio - Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson bestowed
the latest in a long list of awards recognizing the 77-year-old French
musician's pre-eminence in contemporary musical life".
"...Toronto pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico
opened the program with the first not needing one, the Piano Sonata No.
1 (1946), densely argued music written in the wake of Arnold Schoenberg
and his abandonment of tonality. Highly cerebral and calling for a huge
variety of articulations from the pianist (which Petrowska Quilico certainly
supplied), the sonata also exploded with colour and energy".
-William Littler, Toronto Star, Nov. 25, 2002
(Left to right) Governor General Adrienne
Clarkson, pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico, composer Pierre Boulez,
following the performance of Boulez's piano sonata.
Monday Magazine
November 25 – December 1, 1999
By Naomi Lester
New Canadian music - with some bite to it
Like Sundogs, this recording features a variety of composers and
styles. The unifying element here is that they are all short piano pieces
written by Canadian women composers and all played with easy expertise
by Christina Petrowska. There are two pieces by Ann Southam, "Glass
Houses" and "Rivers", written in a hypnotic minimalist
vein. Larysa Kuzmenko's pieces, "Diabolic Dance" and "In
Memoriam", are full of ten-sion and virtuosity, dark and biting in
overall tone.
Also included are Diana Mcintosh's spacious "Worlds Apart"
and Heather Schmidt's "Solus", which ranges from introspective
to burst-ing with percussive immediacy - then trails away again to querying,
coruscating upper notes. Alexina Louie's "Music for Piano",
a five-piece suite, strikes a wonderful balance between an impressionistic,
roman-tic quality and a muscular insistence in the melodies that does
credit to Petrowska's command of touch. These are all pieces written by
and for top-notch pianists, and take full advantage of the vast range
of possibilities offered by the instrument.
