Review: "A kind of extravagance that had showmanship but never felt cheap. With a fresh, clean, crystalline sound, he played with a kind of ease and smoothness that refuses to airbrush the music, but animates it from within."

Review from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Thank you for the amazing review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, of my concert with the phenomenal Sarah Ioannides and The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia!

Full Review: http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/david_patrick_stearns/chamber-orchestra-meets-beethoven-in-an-wild-card-concert-20171105.html

Excerpts:

"Such a display still has novelty, though Albright didn’t need it, so distinctive were his improvisational ideas and overall presence. Though the demure lyricism of “Fur Elise” is something one associates with music boxes, Albright took off from it in what turned into a tour of 19th-century pianism."

"As clever as he sounds, Albright, in fact, gave the improvisation something I rarely witness in such settings: a highly personal emotional depth, as if he was expressing his inner self rather than simply exercising his powers of invention. For those of us still feeling scarred by the Philadelphia Orchestra’s opening concert at Carnegie Hall — in which Lang Lang stomped all over a semi-improvised Rhapsody in Blue — this concert brought the art of classical-music improvisation to a new level."

"Of course, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 was bound to show a more filtered version of Albright — it’s a tightly written concerto — though his personality was evident in his way of shaping a phrase with a kind of extravagance that had showmanship but never felt cheap. With a fresh, clean, crystalline sound, he played with a kind of ease and smoothness that refuses to airbrush the music, but animates it from within. You simply hear more Beethoven than usual and with a kind of rhythmic momentum that makes you listen more closely, no matter how familiar the music has become. And yes, he improvised the first-movement cadenza as Beethoven himself might have."

"Such a display still has novelty, though Albright didn’t need it, so distinctive were his improvisational ideas and overall presence. Though the demure lyricism of “Fur Elise” is something one associates with music boxes, Albright took off from it in what turned into a tour of 19th-century pianism."

"As clever as he sounds, Albright, in fact, gave the improvisation something I rarely witness in such settings: a highly personal emotional depth, as if he was expressing his inner self rather than simply exercising his powers of invention. For those of us still feeling scarred by the Philadelphia Orchestra’s opening concert at Carnegie Hall — in which Lang Lang stomped all over a semi-improvised Rhapsody in Blue — this concert brought the art of classical-music improvisation to a new level."

"Of course, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 was bound to show a more filtered version of Albright — it’s a tightly written concerto — though his personality was evident in his way of shaping a phrase with a kind of extravagance that had showmanship but never felt cheap. With a fresh, clean, crystalline sound, he played with a kind of ease and smoothness that refuses to airbrush the music, but animates it from within. You simply hear more Beethoven than usual and with a kind of rhythmic momentum that makes you listen more closely, no matter how familiar the music has become. And yes, he improvised the first-movement cadenza as Beethoven himself might have."