Acclaim
“…[an] arresting performance of Schumann, Brahms and Beethoven…Babini is one of those artists for whom thoughtful charisma carries more weight than extroverted gesture. She has a tone of great purity. Her intonation in Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro was so sensitively calibrated that notes doubled with the piano often made the two sounds indistinguishable…a gorgeous, deep sound…a liquid sense of phrasing that became quite emotional. It was all very individual and refined, which had the wonderfully paradoxical effect of making strong statements in a quiet voice.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Babini and [pianist Spencer] Myer were mesmerizing in Rachmaninoff’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, with all the surging impetuosity you’d want but also Mozartean clarity of structure.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
“…Astral cellist Susan Babini was like a beacon of clarity with a lean sound and a stoic emotional reserve…The performance was everything it could be.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Susan Babini’s cello recital…represented, indeed, some of the most honestly self-revealing playing I’ve ever heard….Babini’s concert was beautifully played from beginning to end. Babini played the opening Elliott Carter ‘Figment’…with fiery conviction. She and accompanist Anna Polonsky made the Beethoven Op. 69 everything one might have hoped….” – The Broad Street Review (Philadelphia)
“…when Babini plays something, you tend to remember it, not just because she plays this amazing range of repertory beautifully (which she certainly does) but because, with body language and facial expression, she so thoroughly sells her listeners on every note she plays.” – The Broad Street Review
“Cellist Susan Babini gave herself fully to [Aaron Jay Kernis’s Colored Field] and made every register of her instrument speak, even as Kernis’s writing required her to move rapidly from low to high. She made wailing, voice-like sections sound truly pained and readily changed her coloring from transparent to opaque as the mood demanded it.” – Haddonfield Courier-Post
