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… [Oxana] Mikhailoff’s performance goes admirably. Her Haydn is crystalline, nimble […] Her Rachmaninoff is turbulent and exultant. At the close of her program, audience members rise in dense thickets and applaud.
[…] “It brought tears to my eyes” …
—The Washington Post Magazine,
… Total clarity of articulation and balance were everywhere apparent, even in the densest waves of material. […] It was tempting to wonder if Mikhailoff ever won a competition with Chopin’s Sonata in B minor, for she must have. Her performance of the work Sunday was one of utter assurance, the kind that sends judges to their feet. […] To fans of piano, it was pure heaven. …
— The Patriot News,
I wish to strongly recommend the magnificent pianist, Oxana Mikhailov. I have known Ms. Mikhailov for many years, during which she has played for me several times, not only at the Manhattan School of Music, where I am Resident Conductor, but also twice with my Greenwich (Connecticut) Symphony. She played the Chopin e minor concerto and the Rachmaninoff 2nd Concerto, both brilliantly.
Ms. Mikhailoff is to me a true example of the great Russian tradition of piano playing. The smoothness and total control of her technique allows her to always go for the big line, and the poetry of her playing is extraordinary. She plays with great authority and maturity. She is an artist whose work should become widely known. I urge you to consider her very seriously, and I recommend her without reservation.
— Conductor David Gilbert,
… [Oxana Mikhailoff] is a mature and accomplished musician […]. Her playing has character, imagination, and is poetic. She has a strong personality and stage presence.
— Maestro Vladimir Feltsman, |
… Ms. Mikhailoff, the program’s piano soloist, is certainly a rising star. […] [She] took the stage for a virtuosic performance of the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto that set a new standard by which this reviewer will henceforward judge all other performances.
[…] The audience rose to its feet with cries of “bravo!” Ms Mikhailoff received four curtain calls. All present had experienced a near perfect musical fusion of audience, composer, soloist, orchestra, and heaven. …
— Greenwich Post,
… It’s impossible to tell everything that happened last Monday [in Martha Argerich’s Festival]. The last segment brought the big deals of the day. The debut of Oxana Mikhailoff, with Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto which led her to the Second Prize, was memorable. …
— TXT Magazine,
Oxana Mikhailoff opened with a wonderful account of Beethoven’s early “Sonata No. 10” and sustained her case with an equally compelling performance of Chopin’s “Sonata No. 3.”
With a light touch on the keyboard, she conjured an orchestral range of sonorities, from cello-like buzzing and dark organ tones to crisp, upper-register chiming. Throughout her recital, Mikhailoff kept a close rein on dynamics, generating musical drama by other means.
In the Beethoven, for example, her trills induced musical whiplash with their sudden accelerations. And she harnessed her technique to broader narrative conceptions: teasing a tick-tock nursery march from Beethoven’s andante and letting that comic theme peek through in a series of variations.
In the Chopin, she deftly sustained countervailing lines — one on each hand — reminding one that this most- Romantic composer had a passion for the counterpoint of J.S. Bach.
— The Times-Picayune, |
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