Press
"One can only admire his musicality, virtuosity, and sheer endurance; how firmly he held this unique work, shaping it into an immense arc that transcended its contrasting styles. An absolute success. So absolute that even the most jaded critic can only bow before his performance. While “performance” is too reductive, there’s no point looking for another word. Tonight, David Lively was the Music. Full stop."
Bertrand Renard
"Lively Wows: Two highlights at last. David Lively addresses the audience to present, with accuracy and clarity, a fascinating program, which culminates in Fauré's haunting 10th Barcarolle and the little-known sonata (1917-18) by the American Charles Griffes. Claudio Arrau's former student plays this ferocious music from memory (a tour de force), with first-rate skill and virtuosity. Full of panache, he takes all the risks, breathing great energy into the Three Movements of Stravinsky's Petrushka.."
Bertrand Boissard
"Power, brio, a healthy and necessary aggressiveness, of course. But also, by the grace of an extremely sensitive touch, moments of exquisite and discreet tenderness, areas of pure and almost immaterial poetry. The technique is superb, with sovereign ease.."
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Pierre-Petit
"In Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto, David Lively demonstrated his mastery of the multi-faceted and the decorative, adding ornamentation and nuances to his part like a network of tendrils. It shone with a familiarity that was truly delightful. Moreover, Lively set off his pianistic fireworks without a trace of boastful showmanship, thus avoiding an outright juggling display."
"American to the core, David Lively is a virtuoso artist made for vast canvases."
Pierre Gervasoni
"The works for violin and piano by Debussy, Ravel and Fauré selected belong to the nec plus ultra of the French repertoire. Tatiana Samouil and David Lively pay a superb tribute, to be savoured without delay."
Jean-Luc Caron
"David Lively, the most French of American pianists, invites us to make another discovery. His taste for the seldom performed is well known, as is his fabulous talent, which brought us an anthology version of Busoni's Concerto, but this time, under the benevolent protection of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, he is going to reveal to us the very rare. Let us judge: the two Sonatas by Benjamin Godard, the Scène du Bal and the Six Airs de danse dans le style ancien by Leo Delibes. We are already all ears, as for Debussy's Suite Bergamasque, the only well known score of a concert that smells of adventure."
Jean-Charles Hoffelé
"David Lively's taste for contemporary music, especially that of the United States, is no mystery. Of American origin, this gifted keyboardist, who has enjoyed a solid reputation in France since his participation in the Long-Thibaud-Crespin competition, has established himself as one of the best interpreters of the music of Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland and Charles Ives. It is therefore hardly surprising to find these three composers on the menu of his latest disc (I Got Rhythm, La Musica), most of which is devoted to George Gershwin and his arrangements for solo piano of his vocal standards. A dizzying perspective, where Carter's revolutionary Thoughts on the Piano rubs shoulders with hits from the American Songbook, putting us back in the atmosphere of a Woody Allen. But Lively is not far off. Equally at ease with the creative process as he is with Renaissance repertoire, he travels through the eras at will."
Thierry Hilleriteau
"A glance at David Lively's discography is enough to understand that the Franco-American pianist has no taste for one-size-fits-all recordings (he has ventured into the Concertos of Busoni, Marx and Furtwängler or the chamber music of Huybrechts, among others). The recital "I Got Rhythm", released on January 26, offers a new illustration of his curiosity. In the introductory lines of his program, the man who moved to this side of the Atlantic when he was only 16 years old does not hide the nostalgia that led him to this return to the sources of American music. From Scott Joplin's illustrious and soothing Maple Leaf Rag - the first song in the music edition to have sold more than a million copies - to Elliot Carter's Catenaries - in a truly dizzying interpretation - Lively has composed a musical album that is as balanced as it is contrasted, one of those records that grab your attention from the very first track and doesn't let go until the end. Indeed, how can one resist the solar energy of Souvenir de Porto Rico or Louis Moreau Gottschalk's Banjo, the mastery and the energy with which Charles Ives' brief Some Southpaw Pitching is performed? One can enjoy no less than a dozen excerpts from Gershwin's Songbook: to say that Lively is playing from his family tree is to state the obvious, but the result is admirable in its tact, charm and wit. And with what a palette of colors does the interpreter do justice to each of the miniatures he tackles, there as in Copland's Four Blues, no less characterized than Barber's Excursions, a collection that has not often been heard interpreted before with so much sound imagination. The Hoedown from William Albright's Five Chromatic Dances, with its abundant freedom, two memorable performances of Carter's Intermittences and Caténaires and - icing on the cake and a nod to Joplin - William Bolcom's heady and more than tonic Serpent's Kiss -Rag Fantasy crown a recital of admirable coherence. "A journey," writes David Lively, "and a celebration to boot!"
Alain Cochard
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