Viney-Grinberg Piano Duo: Press

An absolutely first rate performance of three excerpts from Robert
Schumann's Six Etudes in the Form of a Canon in the two piano arrangement by
Claude Debussy was delivered by the husband and wife team of Liam Viney and
Anna Grinberg. I cannot imagine a finer performance, as this one had
everything, illuminating every bar of the music. They followed this with
the technical tour de force that is John Adams' Hallelujah Junction, a work
for two pianos that I think has more notes packed into about 14 minutes than
the entire first act of Gotterdammerung. Intricate beyond its worth, nearly
interminable, and filled with more perils than an Afghanistan mine field, I
don't think that Viney and Grinberg flubbed an entrance or misplayed a
phrase. The audience went wild, and it had little to do with John Adams.

Liam Viney is a fabulously equipped pianist and his recital of Australian piano music was one of the most exciting I've heard in the last couple of decades. In addition to being an invaluable introduction to some of the most vital and individual music being written anywhere today, it was also a hugely entertaining evening. One doesn't usually think of contemporary music as being crowd-pleasing, but if the Piano Spheres audience was any indication, then this selection certainly was. Viney proved an ideal guide to this wide ranging, technically challenging music. In fact, his playing was so exuberant and effortless that he must certainly rank with the most accomplished pianists of his generation.

Liam Viney's recital: a spectacularly successful journey into the world of contemporary Australian piano music, with Peter Sculthorpe's (b. 1929) evocative, mysterious "Three Pieces for Piano" making a most natural centerpiece.

Viney's tone is warm and full. His musical imagination is as large as the continent he comes from. That's a good thing, because the music on his varied and colorful program took listeners to many places. It was an invigorating experience hearing such a commanding and authoritative recital. He is 30 years old.

His stunning performance of Carl Vine's (b. 1954) Piano Sonata No. 1, which I first heard played by his countryman Michael Kieran Harvey in 1993, displayed a thrilling virtuosity and an almost preternatural ability to create the kind of rich sonority that almost lifts a listener off the ground.

After the recital, someone asked if he was left-handed, so powerful was the sound coming from that side of the piano. "No," he said. At least on this night, he sounded like an Australian Maurizio Pollini--a two-handed pianist who is unbeatable in certain areas of the piano literature.

Viney performed the entire recital from memory. Amazing. Clearly, this was not meant merely to impress. This music is in his blood, representing a labor of love on a scale seldom seen these days.

I learned later that the pianist performed the U.S. premiere of Matthew Hindson's (b.1968) challenging and exhilarating techno-prankish "Plastic Jubilation" unaided by a click track. Wow.

There were five U.S. premieres on his program. (Thank goodness for the Piano Spheres series.)

I need to hear Nigel Westlake's Piano Sonata again. I've never heard of this 50-year-old Australian composer. His work gave Viney an opportunity to show what he can do with those propulsive rhythmic figures in the first of the Sonata's three movements, played without pause. For a while, it was as if composer and pianist were channeling the restless spirit of Prokofiev.

(Viney's playing had) "maturity and flair"

"Tuesday's was a first-rate performance...The piano parts are exceptionally difficult... I wonder what Stockhausen would have thought of Ray, a member of Piano Spheres, and Viney, a young Australian pianist on the CalArts faculty.

Their virtuosity went beyond technique (with which they are fully equipped). They added the element of joy, and even humor, as if to say that Stockhausen may be over the top but that "Mantra" is a great piece anyway. I thought they got it just right."

"Given such a demanding work I’m pleased to be able to commend Viney on a tremendously powerful performance. Viney, wearing a neck brace either in anticipation or because he caught Young’s whiplash, brought out the pythian anguish of the music in the two outer movement’s well; discerning too was Viney’s selection of tempi (robbing Prokofiev of his motoric force is about the worst crime a pianist can commit), and the bathetic hilarity of the inner Minuet (Andante sognando) with its drunken counterpoints was splendidly done.

The series concluded with the mighty Sonata No. 7 in B Flat Major, Op. 83... this work calls for virtuosity of the finest order. The soloist once again was Liam Viney ... in a blistering execution of the notorious toccata finale (Precipitato), and the cynical faux naiveté of the middle movement’s lyricism was captured beautifully."

"An absolutely first rate performance of three excerpts from Robert Schumann's Six Etudes in the Form of a Canon in the two piano arrangement by Claude Debussy was delivered by the husband and wife team of Liam Viney and Anna Grinberg. I cannot imagine a finer performance, as this one had everything, illuminating every bar of the music. They followed this with the technical tour de force that is John Adams' Hallelujah Junction, a work for two pianos that I think has more notes packed into about 14 minutes than the entire first act of Gotterdammerung. Intricate beyond its worth, nearly interminable, and filled with more perils than an Afghanistan mine field, I don't think that Viney and Grinberg flubbed an entrance or misplayed a phrase. The audience went wild, and it had little to do with John Adams."

"...last night was a revelation for me.
PianoSpheres opened its new season with Vicki Ray and her CalArts colleague Liam Viney... I really liked Mantra. I was captured by it. The hour went by and seemed like 15 minutes."

"Violinist Roberto Cani and pianist Liam Viney made the tricky Stravinsky pieces sound easy."

"I think that the dancers more naturally responded to the music being created there with them, especially played as well as it was by Liam Viney and Roberto Cani, piano and violin respectively."