Gramophone Magazine, Editor's Choice, December 2013
BBC Music Magazine, Instrumental Choice - 5*, December 2013
A deeply passionate and sensitive performer, Christian Blackshaw is celebrated for the tremendous emotional depth, great understanding and incomparable musicality of his performances. He performed the complete Mozart piano sonatas at Wigmore Hall between 2012 and 2013, and this is the first of four volumes recorded for Wigmore Hall Live. Of these great works, justifiably considered to be at the pinnacle of the solo piano repertoire, Blackshaw says: 'to my mind, the sonatas resemble mini operas, even if conceived for and performed by a solo player… For me, they imbue the spirit with joy, laughter, sadness, contemplation, exhilaration.' In 2010 he completed a Mozart Sonata cycle at St George's Bristol, BBC Music Magazine writing of his final concert that it was 'one of the finest Mozart recitals I've heard in years.' During the summer of 2012 he performed another in St Petersburg where he appeared at Valery Gergiev's White Nights Festival, before a triumphant return to the Southbank International Piano Series. His hugely acclaimed Wigmore Hall Mozart sonata series concluded in January 2013.