“Soloist Vivian Choi clearly revels in the piano part’s sweeping scales and organ-like sonorities building from the bottom up, and her assertive projection underlines the writing’s urgency and sinew.”
“Pianist Vivian Choi gives a virtuosic and fluid rendition of the demanding solo part.”
"Vivian Choi is an exemplar of the modern global pianist. It’s not clear if this is her debut recording, but it’s my first experience of her playing, and it reveals her virtues clearly. She boasts an enviably transparent, generally treble-leaning sound that often provides luminous textures... She’s alert to shifts in mood, especially those that come with subtle harmonic shadings. Thus, while her rubato can be quite evocative in the more romantic music, she can play with tremendous rhythmic vitality in the sections that demand it. In sum, an impressive introduction to a pianist well worth hearing."
Fanfare (USA)
"It [Huang Ruo Piano Concerto "Unscrolled"] is not a conventional piano concerto, in the soloist vs. orchestra sense; the piano is an active and crucial part of the whole, rarely the main focus, and hardly ever heard on its own. But its insistent figuration demands considerable energy, which Vivian Choi supplied expertly."
The Wall Street Journal (USA)
"A chance to hear one of Australia's most gifted young pianists, Vivian Choi, for whom undoubtedly a great future awaits."
Noteworthy (Australia)
"A fine, assured performance by pianist Vivian Choi, the highly promising student of Kyunghee Lee, in Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1. This 18-year-old has few peers in her age group, and not a plethora of them on the older local scene. Her performance of the Dohnányi concerto last year, with the Sydney Youth Orchestra, and now Tchaikovsky, earn her great respect."
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
"Australia-raised Choi's particular brand of expressiveness has been attracting attention since she made her debut at the Sydney Opera House at the age of 12."
Gisborne Herald (New Zealand)
“Oboist Nancy Dimock and pianist Vivian Choi flashed through breathless passages of counterpoint, impossibly fast but no less precise.”
The Boston Globe (USA)
"Vivian may be a relatively young person, but she has the power and artistry of a mature pianist twice her age. If you attend this concert, you may be seeing and hearing the next pianist to take the concert world by storm."
Ocean Park Chautauqua-by-the-Sea Concert Guide (USA)
"Dan Welcher’s Florestan’s Falcon (A Fantasy After Schumann) really took flight in the lively and engaged soaring of pianist Vivian Choi and flutist Deborah Boldin. It sounded like a new piano had been brought onto the stage for the second half, so outgoing was Choi. She provided the supercharged chase-plane that permitted our closeups of Boldin’s fluttering and gyrating bird, and from both players we got freedom, theatricality and interaction that sounded perfectly right."
The Boston Musical Intelligencer (USA)
"Choi is particularly appealing in the beautiful slow movement, which still, however, has dozens of notes per second in places... she makes light once again of all technical demands, keeping control of the torrent of notes that threatens to spill off the pages of the score."
Music Web International (UK)
“Choi is passionate and ripples sharply on the piano... dappled, darting, shimmering, flowing, soaring and circling...Choi showed off her impeccable bravura technique moving very fast through all major and minor keys in a rapidly evolving passage where each note is replaced one at a time by the next note in a breathless progressive sequence.”
Sydney Arts Guide
"Vivian Choi is both daring, and clean in her daringness. There is nothing Ms Choi cannot do.”
Ned Rorem (Pulitzer Prize-winning composer)