REVIEWS

On her recording of Bach’s complete Well-Tempered Clavier (2006):

“PIANIST HAS STUDIED BACH’S ‘CLAVIER’ SINCE AGE 10 AND IT SHOWS”
“Three new versions have appeared in recent months, all by senior pianists who have made the work their lifelong study: Daniel Barenboim (Warner Classics), Vladimir Ashkenazy (Decca), and Evelyne Crochet (Music & Arts). . . . The most completely satisfying playing comes from Evelyne Crochet . . . . Because this music was meant to be studied and played in private, recording is an ideal medium for Crochet’s intimate, sensitive, poetic, and reflective playing, which is also exceptional for its beauty of tone.”
– Richard Dyer, Boston Globe

“Musicians have always cherished the Well Tempered Clavier. . . . None, in my hearing, has been more all-round persuasive than Evelyne Crochet, and none has seemed to be more fully identified with the work. To her fellow musicians . . . it will come as no surprise that this set simply and clearly calls for the top recommendation among recordings of the WTC. The performance was shaped by a lifetime of constantly deepening understanding of the music . . . . [The recording] is beautifully attuned to the music itself and the exceptionally warm tone of its remarkable champion.”
– Richard Freed, Soundstage

“Beauty, elegance and exquisite pianism grace the new set of Bach’s complete Well Tempered Clavier played by Evelyne Crochet. . . . With Crochet, I hear ‘rays of light’ from the chromatic architecture that I’ve never heard from any other version. . . . [T]he performances take off into transcendent realms when her legato intersects with Bach’s dense chromatic structures. . . . I treasure this set for Crochet’s uplifting performance and consider it one of the best on record. . . .”
– Donald Satz, Recording Review

   

On her recording of Fauré’s complete piano music:

“[A] must for Faure fans. . . . [She] has undertaken the job which is, to judge from her sensitive playing, a labor of love. She has technique to spare but is in no hurry. Her tone is admirable for its clarity. . . .”
– New York Times

“Her performances here combine an exquisite feeling for coloristic effects with kaleidoscopic fingerwork. She commands a formidable, indeed, a seemingly infallible virtuoso technique. . . . I am still astonished by the ravishing excellence of Crochet’s work on these discs and could hardly conceive of these interpretations being bettered.”
– High Fidelity Magazine

   

On her performances:

“This impressive artist obviously does not cater to the whims of her public. Her interpretations reveal a maturity, a mastery and a depth of insight which we would unhesitatingly call a visionary’s. Evelyne Crochet is one possessed. [ A] Maria Callas of the piano. . . . Seldom was the meaning of re-creation made clearer to us. . . . She leaves nothing to chance yet her playing sounds spontaneous and alive.”
– Amsterdam Handelsblad

 “This is a female Schnabel. . . .”
– San Francisco Chronicle

“Evelyne Crochet proved to be a master of the keyboard; something going beyond mere technical brilliance or acrobatic virtuosity but rather aiming at the spiritual contents of her art.”
– Goslarsche Zeitung

“She is a Mozart player par excellence, the phrases elegantly turned, the notes purling forth with radiant clarity.”
– Christian Science Monitor

“THE EXCITING RETURN OF CROCHET”
“[S]he began with Haydn Sonata in C Major (HOB. XVI/50), which she played with a beautifully regulated pianism and darting musical imagination. . . . Crochet followed this up with both books of Debussy’s ‘Images.’ These were notable for the beauty of her sound, or rather sounds, because each piece was a rank of terraces struck by moonlight at different angles. . . . After intermission, Crochet played Schubert‘s big A- Minor Sonata, Op. 42, all repeats intact. This embraced four planets, each with its own momentum, varied climate and terrain. The slow movement was astonishing in its contrasts, and the relationships that bind them; the first episode . . . was of an enchanting lightness. The playing was bold to the point of wildness and breathtakingly intimate, complicated and then heartstoppingly simple, and that is just the way Schubert is.”
– Richard Dyer, Boston Globe

“Her work was marked both by a technical ease and assurance and by much else that associates itself with artists of maturity and insight. [Take] her stunning traversal of Olivier Messiaen’s ‘Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus’. The pianist had total command of instrument, idiom and purpose. She applied limitless degree of touch, her pedal became an eloquent force and her conception of the music quite overwhelming.”
– Washington Post

“With Evelyne Crochet, we became acquainted with a pianist of considerable importance. [Her] masterly playing fascinated [us] with her clarity of form, impressive power and great energy.”
– Arbeiter Zeitung (Vienna)

“Musical to her fingertips and endowed with an impeccable keyboard technique.”
– London Times

“There are alas no records of wife Clara playing Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto when the work was younger by several thousand performances. But she could hardly have given a more spontaneous, fresher-sounding reading than did Evelyne Crochet with the London Symphony at the [Royal] Festival Hall last night.”
– London Daily Telegraph

“[I]n Debussy’s demanding two books of Etudes, Crochet played splendidly in what seemed to be complete comfort. She had all the necessary technical resources to play these pieces. But each etude had a clear musical character and she never made a musical compromise. . . . [She then] played the US premiere of a work by Henri Dutilleux, ‘Le Jeu des Contraires’. . . . [It is] music of episodic and improvisatory character that clearly had captivated her. [She] played it beautifully. . . .”
– Anthony Tommasini, Boston Globe

“The way Evelyne Crochet lovingly illuminated the smallest detail and filled it [Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K. 453] with meaningful significance was exemplary. Such Mozart has not been heard for a long time.”
– Braunschweiger Press

“The piano under her fingers and at the demand of her highly personal address, is no mechanical and percussive instrument. She makes it sing with a peculiar eloquence which, though very personal, is drawn soberly and thoughtfully out of the material she plays. So it was with the Bach Toccata in D Major, the Liszt Petrarch Sonnet deliciously atmospheric, and the Dante Sonata summoning up the thunders and evoking the shadows masterfully. It was playing of poetry and passion.”
– Kansas City Times

“She has undeniable technique, a sensitive ear for color and that harmonic perception which permits her to think of music in terms of key relationships.”
– Montreal Star

“In Ravel’s Piano Concerto, Evelyne Crochet played with technical virtuosity, rhythmical charm and all possible wit, finesse, radiance and glitter. She and Rafael Kubelik were heartily applauded at the Herkulessaal.”
– Muenchener Merkur

“An immensely gifted artist, Miss Crochet’s playing is marked by a beautifully controlled lyricism. [In Schubert] Miss Crochet brought such a fresh delicacy to each repetition that one would have been satisfied had they been twice as long.”
– Musical America

“A sensitive artist of a kind too rare these days, combining a musical awareness with a polished technique.”
– Ottawa Journal

“A great and absolute tone, intelligence and genuine poetry marked the playing of this extraordinary artist.”
– Berner Tagblatt