News Quotes

[The] “programme revealed, in every phrase, Sullivan’s impassioned and deeply considered approach to music, in every way worthy of attention and devotion. Sullivan’s playing was engrossing, fully engaging the listener in his concentrated and complex interpretations that sought the very essence of this music’s characteristic expressive lyricism and structured intellectual rigour.

“The palpable integrity of Sullivan’s interpretative approach gave validity to the extremes of playing – headlong, virtuoso energy on the one hand, and, on the other, a refreshing, often eloquent elasticity of tempo in the music’s many lyrical stanzas.

“In the youthful sonic excess of [Brahms’] first sonata, Sullivan’s digital athleticism made a lot of noisy sparks fly with a spontaneity that is all too often lacking from live performance today.”

“Gil Sullivan – who, in Australia is one of the greats – is a pleasant exception amongst the unfortunately rising number of younger male, and especially female, pianists who present themselves on their CDs in a neat and sexy fashion, but whose playing often provokes only a bored yawn.  And Sullivan especially does not submit to what popular music taste dictates – mainstream, as it is called nowadays – which says that Mozart has to sound such and such, or Chopin in exactly that way.  No, Gil Sullivan does it his own way; he is a philosopher, he questions, he analyses and only then does he sit down at his instrument. His playing of Mozart is truly unique and altogether spellbinding, like no Mozart playing this reviewer has ever heard. Many times I felt I was listening to Mozart himself there on stage, so bold, fresh, stylish, and innovative were the interpretations, which never affected the music’s true kernel”.

Remarkable precision and power of expression

Pianist Gil Sullivan convinces with his guest performance

His piano playing is stamped with expressive power, a touch which displays remarkable precision. The Australian concert pianist Gil Sullivan – one of the greats in his homeland – appeared as guest at the invitation of the International F Chopin Music Academy – Germany.

Gil Sullivan has seen the great concert halls and played in the New York Carnegie Hall, in the Berlin and Vienna Konzerthauses, and in the  Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, plus the Art Center of Chicago. Now he has also found the path to Lahr and thankfully performed for a sold out audience of 1,500. Bozena Ficht-Maciejowska, the founder and director of the International F Chopin Music Academy had invited him in the previous year, having met him in Seoul in Sth Korea. In 2006, for Mozart’s 250^th birthday, Sullivan, who by the way speaks excellent German, includes all that composer’s piano works in his repertoire. To begin his concert he played Mozart’s sonata K332 in F. Light-footed and elegant, in the middle part, full of sensibility, Sullivan kindled the fervour and ardour of the 22yr old Mozart at the time of its composition. Following immediately were 3 works by the Australian composer Miriam Hyde. Gil Sullivan dived into a pictorial, poetic – though still expressive – tonal world in which Australian and English landscapes manifested themselves, including a raging thunderstorm.

The excursion in the spirit of late romantic tonal language provided scope for Beethoven’s sonata no.29, the famous and notoriously labelled as ‘unplayable’ “Hammerklavier”, which was performed for the first time decades after Beethoven’s death, by Liszt. Especially the last 2 movements demand technical brilliance and the highest degree of concentration. Sullivan made an indelible and truly unforgetable impression with his astonishing accuracy, enticing from the keys of the grand piano, an almost blinding fireworks display of technical and musical brilliance!

Impressive Beethoven Interpretation

The Australian pianist GS convinces in his concert…..

DARMSTADT….”………….here you have a sonata which will give pianists something to work at….” Beethoven wrote in 1819, as he sent the piano sonata no.29 to his publisher.  And indeed the ‘Hammerklavier sonata is Beethoven’s most difficult work for piano. Interpreter of the first public performance, decades after Beethoven’s death, was Franz Liszt. Now Gil Sullivan impressed, in the Darmstadter Orangerie, with an interpretation that brought out the personal element of this sonata.

With breathtakingly light playing and complete technical security, the pianist took the first movement with all the power and impact which, among others, through the contrast-rich main theme and the energetic, almost unending harmonic and contrapuntal curving surges, is built into the composition, and brought out the fine nuances of this over-dimensional work.

The third movement with its simply embossed melody, he played with deeply felt and touching dedication, while in the Finale, his stunning accuracy was dazzlingly brilliant with the stormy fugue.

Also in Mozart’s KV332 sonata, Sullivan pleased with light-hearted playing which allowed Mozart’s roguish and mischievous character to burst out. Due to intelligently placed tempo rubatos, one after another, thematic ideas seemed to appear and grow.

As contrast, the only Australian fully professional concert pianist delivered three landscape portraits of his homeland: the pieces of Miriam Hyde (1913-2005) allowed pictures of strange, wild landscapes to flow past us, and the public was enthused and delighted by this Australian impressionism.