Virginia Eskin, Pianist/Critical Acclaim

Berkshire Eagle Review, March 18, 2008
Andy Pincus

"Eskin took charge - literally- her flamboyant approach, suited the variations....the lady can make a piano speak, sing and thunder"

Berkshire Eagle Review, Nov 2, 2007
Richard Houdek

"Eskin is formidable at the keyboard. One is reminded of Gina Bachauer (her teacher apparently) who "played like a man" Aside from her obvious keyboard gifts, Eskin also demonstrated superb poise as a gifted interlocutor. It was she who offered the concluding keynote, observing that the music of women composers is not main stream..........."but we're getting there!" she asserted.

Boston Globe, March 26, 2004
A fine night of firsts for the ballet

As with the Stravinsky, the Virgil Thomson score Morris chose is played onstage -- by Virginia Eskin, who not only made the complex music legible but looked as elegant and svelte as the dozen dancers in their Santo Loquasto costumes.

Boston Herald, March 27, 2004
CD Review of Bartok, Beach and Strimple

I like Amy Beach. Her Gaelic Symphony is a delight, and I'd love to see some enterprising company (Naxos, maybe?) give pianist Virginia Eskin a shot at recording her piano concert. She has championed the work for years, after all.

Berkshire Eagle, October 21, 2003
Eastern Europe flavors MusicWorks opener

Eskin seemed the driving force behind the performances. Always a powerhouse at the keyboard, she took full advantage of the virtuoso opportunities in Liszt's solo showpiece. It was amazing how much volume she could get out of the church's baby grand, especially in the fire and thunder of the rhapsody's ending.

Berkshire Eagle, November 13, 2002
Review of Gideon Klein's Piano Sonata, composed at the Tereizin concentration camp (1943):

The formidable Boston-based pianist Virginia Eskin, in a blazing, impetuous reading of a harsh and chilling work, succeeded in recreating a musical vision of an artist's life under brutally inhumane conditions.

Time Magazine Review of Fluffy Ruffle Girls
An irresistible CD by pianist Virginia Eskin

...an irresistible CD by pianist Virginia Eskin ... Eskin captures all the insouciant charm of the country's first great popular music, and firmly observes Joplin's admonition that it is never right to play ragtime fast. Just well.

The Boston Globe
A thrilling concert from Virginia Eskin

Eskin's playing was a reminder that being a virtuoso involves more than nailing all the right notes. It involves having musical courage. And if you have personal courage to back it up, as Eskin does, so much the better.

The Sun
Amy Beach's 19th century work is symphony concert's highlight

Boston-based Virginia Eskin, our foremost proponent of turn-of-the-century American music for the piano, served as soloist in the concerto.

As the work's foremost exponent, Virginia Eskin has brought Mrs. Beach's handiwork to the orchestras of Buffalo, N.Y., Rochester, N.Y., San Francisco and Utah among others. It is no wonder she continues to be in demand. She owns the piece, from the Schumannesque reveries of the first movement to the knuckle-busting final Allegro.

Usually, it's the orchestra that collaborates with the pianist, but Ms. Eskin returns the favor, seeking out instrumental soloists - a cello here, a clarinet there - and accompanying them with chamber-like intimacy. When you love and respect the music, you serve it as best you can.

Deseret news
Symphony offers Beethoven, Boulanger and Eskin on the Beach

To this Eskin brought strength, sensitivity and passion, balancing the brilliance of things like the first-movement cadenza against the lilting sparkle of the Scherzo, here taken at an exhilarating clip.

The Boston Globe
Eskin makes familiar music exhilarating

...the series of chords before the coda in the Chopin Ballade was pedaled in a most unusual and compelling way. But the pleasure of Eskin's playing usually lies less in illumination of detail than in its elan and its inexorable momentum; nothing slows her down. Paradoxically, the harder the music, the better Eskin plays - perhaps the best thing on the program was Ravel's "Scarbo," which the composer set out to make the most difficult piece in the repertory. This was superb pianism - and an enthralling bit of storytelling. ...Eskin always goes for broke, and that's why she's not just a pianist but a communicator.

Reader, San Diego's Weekly
Wow! Eskin's own experience of the works she was playing was one of liberation.

Pianist Virginia Eskin (who was born in San Diego but has for many years resided in Boston) gave what can only be described as a sensational recital at the Athenaeum. Eskin's style, whenever the piece makes such an approach appropriate, is stupendously energetic and impetuous, almost wild. She plunges into the music without reserve, intensifying contrasts, underlining climaxes, taking immense risks, holding nothing back. ... --this is Eskin's meat, and she chews it up with a zest that is overwhelming and irresistible.

...And with all this, and the most exciting of all, there was the sense that, for all her magisterial control of a variety of musical styles and compositional personalities, Eskin's own experience of the works she was playing was one of liberation, a spontaneous self-renewal in confrontation with music that she was encountering for the first time.

The Boston Globe
Exploring composers lost in Holocaust

Eskin believes it is desperately important for these compositions to be heard, not only in their historic matrix but as artworks of merit. She pleaded with the assembled student audience to study and play them. "It is incumbent on us all to look for other, odder, wilder music than that in the canon. It can teach you a lot."

In a short variation movement of Viktor Ullman, written in the camp, Eskin showed how a sweet folkloric ditty is transformed into something brutal and cataclysmic, only to end quietly high in the soprano register. She called it "triumphant music of the soul."

The Sun (Baltimore, MD)
Amy Beach's 19th century work is symphony concert's highlight

...Usually, it's the orchestra that collaborates with the pianist, but Ms. Eskin returns the favor, seeking out instrumental soloists -- a cello here, a clarinet there -- and accompanying them with chamber-like intimacy. When you love and respect the music, you serve it as best you can.