PRESS QUOTES

generalanzeiger bonn, 1/2024:

After the Barbican Quartet, pianist Amadeus Wiesensee took to the stage. Once a resident artist at the Beethoven House, he played the three Intermezzi op. 117 by Johannes Brahms, very intimate, restrained pieces full of depth and meaning. Wiesensee played in a very reflective and intimate manner, sensitively bringing out the very heart of these intimate pieces. Fabulous. He also proved to be an informative chatterbox who introduced the evening's works as eloquently as he enriched them, including Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Quintet op. 57, which Wiesensee and the Barbican Quartet handled brilliantly. The ambiguity of this music, oscillating between tragedy and comedy, was expressed just as well as the more light-hearted moments, for example in the light-footed Intermezzo. All in all, this was also a fabulous success.

Klassikinfo, 11/2023:

Wiesensee convinces with an expressive touch and rhythmically differentiated phrasing. The melodic lines are closely guided and crystalline in articulation; this allows him to open up the space in which the free variations then unfold with psychological stringency. [...]

The vanishing point of this concert was Beethoven's last piano sonata. Wiesensee derives the variation theme of the second movement from the first movement through inversion and reduction. The reflections on the "memory trace" in Beethoven's late work, which anticipate the findings of modern cognitive research, are particularly revealing. In the magnificent second movement, Wiesensee succeeds in pulling up the arcs of tension on invisible strings and shaping the long variation section into an aesthetic of the middle voice. At the end, the theme dissolves itself, as announced in the reflection, becoming a listener who lingers in a hymn that points beyond the music.

The often culturally industrialized classical music business would need more such personalities. Ernst Barlach wrote in a letter: "Every art needs two people: one who makes it and one who needs it." Wiesensee is both, which is what makes him so convincing.

Sueddeutsche, 7/2023:

The five excellent musicians succeeded in differentiating vividly: A Shostakovich forte must have a completely different hardness, sharpness and vehemence than a Dvořák forte, whose sound has to inspire with round splendor and cantabile beauty. While Shostakovich's piano passages can pale ghostly, sometimes resembling an almost toneless whisper and seem threatening precisely because of this, Dvořák unfolds tenderness, intimacy and sensitivity in the quiet. While Shostakovich is martial and sarcastic in his Scherzo, Dvořák takes fiery artistry to the pinnacle of pleasure, and the five played out all this and much more with consistent seriousness and rousing bravura. The contrasting nature of the two pieces became a glittering presence. Huge applause, and once again the wonderfully cheeky Dvořák Scherzo as a thank you!

Sueddeutsche, 7/2022:

Here, the music arises from the moment of shared inspiration. Lightning changes of mood are no challenge. The finale of Beethoven's Opus 11 alternates between march-like, elegant and the eponymous popular cheerfulness, captured with unflagging creativity and a delight in stylistic precision.

generalanzeiger bonn, 10/2021:

Sometimes silence is simply the absence of any sound, but sometimes a new cosmos opens up here. At any rate, this was the case at the first piano recital of Amadeus Wiesensee, the first Artist in Residence of the Beethoven-Haus, who filled even the total silence with his presence. [...]

The program was characterized by two monolithic piano works, Robert Schumann's great Fantasy op. 17 in C major and Maurice Ravel's "Gaspard de la nuit", two weighty chunks that pianistically demand the very highest standards. Wiesensee met them effortlessly. His technique is phenomenal, his touch culture extremely differentiated.

bachtrack, 8/2021:

The enigmatic Lachrymae for viola and piano (1950) was performed here by Mathis Rochat and Amadeus Wiesensee, who showed the triumph of Britten’s unpredictable, unexpected timing and carefully arranged dissonances. The piece breaks suddenly from the innocent into the bombastic and can be quite haunting. It was given superb delivery throughout, and near its end there were even glimpses of a lullaby-like resolution.

münchner abendzeitung, 7/2021:

Even those who don't have a flair for the dramatic can learn a bit of acting from Klaus Maria Brandauer. Simply how he does nothing but - listen! His musical partner Amadeus Wiesensee plays the first movement of the last Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor by Ludwig van Beethoven with a nobly shimmering tone and relentless stringency [...].

[Amadeus Wiesensee] also makes Beethoven appear. The "arietta", the finale of the last sonata, arises from a single, huge breath, as if we were present as the composer himself imagines the whole in his mind. On this memorable evening, two charismatics meet, and in the collision we see Beethoven smiling. Ironic, melancholic or even transfigured?

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 6/2019:

“World-class violinist Arabella Steinbacher, the busy, ever-present pianist Amadeus Wiesensee and the great cellist Yuya Okamoto presented the B major Trio by Johannes Brahms poetically and ecstatic at world class level.”

Augsburger Allgemeine, 10/2018:

“In a classical pianist’s tradition, withdrawn, he began, as if playing dreamlike, with Claude Debussy from "Images II" number 2 "Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut" - like a meditation on the past, the lost, perhaps never possessed. Pianist and audience were lost together. A tiny pause, just to catch one's breath - with an outcry, as it were, Robert Schumann's "Fantasy in C major op. 17" began. [...] A dramatic march, a delightful final movement in fine nuances. Wiesensee, almost the same age as the composer Schumann, plays this touching work, resting in himself, delightfully authentic.

"The second part of the concert is also dedicated to homages to Johann Sebastian Bach. Wiesensee, musician and philosopher, sees reflections on death: Ferrucio Busoni's creative interpretation "Fantasia after Johann Sebastian Bach BV 253", combining tonal innovations with a return to old tradition, a masterly rousing keyboard frenzy alternating with lucid passages on chorales by J. S. Bach - furious runs, cross-handles: impressive œuvre and skill. A "typical" work of Olivier Messiaen, composer and enthusiastic ornithologist, follows uninterruptedly, almost compellingly - a suddenly breaking out birdsong against a dark background in the "Première communion de la Vierge" from the "Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus", No. 11: the feelings of Mary at the conception of Jesus: illustrated fear, joy, musical stagger with shrill calls and chasing keyboard runs. Enchanting!

The rapturous enthusiasm of the audience was rewarded with "Kinderszenen" by Robert Schumann. A great concert evening with a young artist to whom the world is open!"

Abendzeitung, 9/2018:

“With Amadeus Wiesensee, there is [...] a certain something that sets him apart from his colleagues. He also spontaneously creates what is undoubtedly a highly thought-out interpretation from the moment, listening to the wondrous sounds he elicits from the grand piano.”

"The climax of the skilfully conceived evening was the great Fantasy in C major by Robert Schumann. [...] Wiesensee knows exactly when he can allow himself intoxication and suction, but he knows just as well when the music calls for nearly meditative thought work. This key work arises here in the highest brightness of consciousness. Such a capacity for reflection, together with his ear for nuances, predestines Wiesensee for Robert Schumann like hardly any other pianist of his generation. The audience in the packed hall thanks him with a long, soothing silence".

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 5/2018:

“Amadeus Wiesensee, born in 1993, the only German candidate for this year's German Pianist Prize in Frankfurt, told the complex and moving narrative of Schumann's C Major Fantasy between rigour and passionate urgency: intensively absorbed, perhaps because he also has a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy.”

Abendzeitung, 5/2018:

“Outstanding piano talent."

"[Mozart] was not performed on that evening, but Robert Schumann's Fantasy in C major, played by Amadeus Wiesensee. The pianist, who was born in Würzburg in 1993 and lives in Munich, competently traces the development from the romantic conflict to the grandiose march to balanced calm. He mastered the piece not only technically but also intellectually, as interpreter. The best classical German school."

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 06/2017:

"Amadeus Wiesensee gave his recital in the Hubertussaal, an ever-changing pianistic tour d'horizon, a thrilling excursion encompassing three centuries, a performance marked by utmost seriousness, compelling concentration and impressive command of structure and design."

"This young man, has an almost uncanny sense of the dark places, the veiled spaces, the contemplative and its shadings. He is far from content with brilliantly illuminating the foreground of the pieces; the musical process allows him to give access, so to speak, to the echo chambers and fields of association that lie behind them. At its most exalted moments it seems as if one can explore the music as a three-dimensional environment."

"Wiesensee unrolls Brahms’s variations as a thrill-packed adventure now drifting off into reverie, now powerfully dominant, as it progresses towards its brilliantly conceived culminating fugal heights.  He conjures up Schubert’s “musical moments” as twilight landscapes full of yearning and in the Prokofiev, for all its resounding martellato harshness, he appreciates the sea of melancholy at the sonata’s centre."

Münchner Merkur, 12/2016:

“The programme featured Johannes Brahms’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel in B flat Op. 24. Given some 25 well-differentiated variations on the simple, warm, in fact almost childlike opening theme, Wiesensee seemed to be engaging with himself, his own emotions, his capabilities and also his challenges. Thrilling to experience his interpretation of that, to hear how he conjured a resonant ground from the piano overlaid with the dialectic of joy, hope, warning, doubt, self-assurance, to the point at which all sensations inevitably pressed heavenwards with the sounds they evoked.”

“After the interval came three of Franz Schubert’s Moments musicaux D780 (Nos 2, 5 and 6), in which Wiesensee portrayed the engagement of the individual with a higher power, with the divine. Everything was there: airy lightness, profundity, powerful drama, striving, tenderness, hope, consolation. In this presentation of the soul’s turmoil, the physical effort of which was plain for all to see, Wiesensee veritably embraced the audience. And the audience was deeply moved. Yet it would not have been a philosophical event, a concert truly in the Wiesensee mould, if it had not tackled the encounter of human beings with their environment, with the nature of their species. This Wiesensee undertook to do with Sergey Prokofiev’s B flat Piano Sonata No. 7 Op. 83: dark, warlike, combative, fleet and sparingly streaked with hope. The abrupt end was a shock. The audience positively sprang to its feet, to stand there for minutes on end applauding and crying Bravo.”

Rhein-Zeitung, 11/2016:

"The rediscovery of the 'speaking' quality and the expressive nature of Baroque music comes through in his Bach playing in the wonderfully realized musical diction and inner meaning of the English Suite No. 6 in D minor BWV 811."

"A true marvel of pianistic grandezza was vouchsafed us by Wiesensee in the second, fifth and sixth of the Moments musicaux D 780 by Franz Schubert. Dedication to the music and a feel for Schubert's breath-stopping rests - no artist can penetrate deeper into the inner workings of this Romantic composer."

[Prokofiev Piano Sonata No. 7] "Everything is played with such scary perfection, such uncanny tension, that one is captivated by the sheer magic of his playing: an energy-charged, pianistically overwhelming, crisply detailed interpretation of the Seventh and its frenzy." (...) "Seldom does one see audiences rising to their feet so spontaneously and with such unity of purpose as on this great evening with Amadeus Wiesensee."

Schwarzwälder Bote, 03/2016:

“The 22-year-old artist seems to be an exceptional phenomenon – not just among artists of his own generation. His advanced artistic maturity and technical brilliance already form a sound foundation for the development of his career and herald a promising future.”

“In the musical poem Vers la flamme (toward the flame) that followed, also by Skriabin, Wiesensee released the full emotional tension that manifests itself in the mockingly demonic dance of death of Prokofiev’s Sonata in B flat major. Here too the pianist left not a single note, not a dynamic contrast, not a caesura or agogic emphasis to chance, and yet his playing came over as spontaneous and profound, transparent and simultaneously of a piece. A truly masterful interpretation.”

“The Fantasias op. 116 by Johannes Brahms, those precious little gems of the Romantic era, sounded now as poetic, now as song-like verses, then like subtle questions, tossed into the air. Wiesensee’s touch was highly differentiated here, well rounded and tactile as pebbles in the repetitions, while soft and supple as water itself in the legato. Yet another profoundly impressive performance.” 

The New Listener, 12/2015

"Amadeus Wiesensee is not your typical virtuoso, he is above all a musician, who sets out to explore and to expound and in the process creates a wonderfully enchanting, poetic approach to the music"

"As an encore, he played an arrangement of Bach's chorale prelude Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, truly moving in its voluntary self-abandonment and in the pure beauty of its interpretation."

Solinger Tagblatt, 11/2015

“Amadeus Wiesensee, just 22 years old, took his audience on a two-hour musical journey that led from heavenly heights into the blackest hell and back again.”

“Taking on the role of compere himself to present the programme that he personally put together, he demonstrated admirable composure and eloquent competence.” 

“Wiesensee first insistently opened out the dance-like Baroque tapestry of Bach’s English Suite No. 5 in E minor to the sold-out Meistermann Hall. Then, with Beethoven’s Sonata op. 27 no. 1 in E flat major, “sister” to the much better known “Moonlight Sonata”, he seemed to almost absorb the audience into the music. Each note he played was consciously accentuated, intensifying the palpable fascination in the hall for the breathtaking combination of technical skill, sensitive expressive power and energetic density he was conjuring from the piano.”

Landshuter Zeitung und Passauer Neue Presse, 08/2015:

“At just 21 years of age, Amadeus Wiesensee outshone nearly all that had gone before with his trance-like combination of reflection and passion, grandeur and daring, monumentality and charm, while proving his ability to separate pathos from bombast.” (Landshuter Zeitung)

“Amazing how this young pianist performs Liszt’s Dante Sonata with such nonchalance, delivering the most virtuosic of passages to perfection, with full-handed chords and lightning-fast demisemiquavers. […] Despite the serious nature of the programme, the Passau audience in the city hall auditorium were enthralled: cries of bravo were heard after the first item, and he received a standing ovation at the end.” (Passauer Neue Presse)

NEUE MUSIKZEITUNG (www.nmz.de), 03/2014

"The way Wiesensee tackled the mighty chord progressions with main force, and at the same time let a wonderful tenderness shine through even the most powerful culmination, will surely not be easy to match. It reminded me at times of the deathless art of Michelangeli."

Remscheider Generalanzeiger, 03/2012

"That all of that can be portrayed by a pianist who is only 18 years old is almost unbelievable. Gently flowing, then forceful, with a sure command of touch and brilliant fingering technique, with fire and feeling, dancing and lyrical, he lived the music, with the unfailing support of the Symphony musicians under Clemens Schuldt. A virtuoso delight, which was rewarded with cries of Bravo - as were all the participants in the storms of closing applause."

Westdeutsche ALlgemeine Zeitung, 03/2012

"But it was Amadeus Wiesensee who left the most lasting impression, as his music resonated at the end of the concert. The young high school graduate gave an astonishingly mature reading of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto in C minor. The fact that a young man of not yet 20 can master and learn by heart such a monumental work, which demands of the pianist to find the balance between restrained accompaniment and tempestuous solos, earned him a standing ovation from the audience."

Süddeutsche Zeitung 08/2009

"Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu in C sharp minor op. posth. 66 gave him the opportunity to demonstrate his bravura and brilliance at the keyboard in a truly textbook display of technique. His runs sparkled with self-assurance, his song was eloquently cantabile. The climax came with Amadeus Wiesensee's powerful shaping and control of the C sharp minor Scherzo op. 39. Composed by a Chopin in delicate health in rainy Mallorca, it offered virtuoso concertante character with orchestral grandeur, together with the songfulness so deeply felt by Wiesensee."