Press
"A genuine artist"
"Hinrich Alpers, a laureate of the last Esther Honens International Piano Competition, (...) contributed a fleet, elegantly played account of Mozart's familiar Piano Concerto No. 22 in A major, K. 488. (...) Alpers, in an individual reading of the work, took the first movement very quickly, the runs brilliant and full of virtuoso panache. (...) The slow movement - the emotional heart of the work - was, however, filled with poetry and was richly expressive in character, the inward element of the music well understood and projected. The finale, a throw-away sprint to the finish, was a return to the pianistic brilliance of the opening movement. (...) Alpers is a genuine artist, and a return engagement would be a welcome event."
(Calgary Herald, October 2008)
"Music making of the highest order. Remember this name: Hinrich Alpers"
"Edgar Varèse was not on the program on Thursday evening, but I thought of him often as I experienced the world premiere of Benedict Mason's "Sonata" performed by the superb young pianist Hinrich Alpers. Mr. Alpers, having won the William Petschek competition at the Juilliard School, made the most of his opportunity to present his debut recital at a major New York venue [Zankel Hall]. (...) Mr. Alpers offered an extremely enthusiastic performance [of Benedict Mason's "Sonata 2008"], emphasizing Day-Glo hues while employing such techniques as playing with his elbows and navigating the uppermost region of the keyboard with icy strength. (...) It is doubtful that anyone could communicate it better than Mr. Alpers.
Mr. Alpers began his evening with a gorgeously liquid reading of the Sonata No. 10 of Alexander Scriabin, a stunning display of chiaroscuro technique and poetic phrasing. Right from the start it was clear that this was not just another talented student, but rather a mature professional trapped in an acolyte's body. A student of Jerome Lowenthal, Mr. Alpers passes all of the mechanical tests with apparent ease, but exhibits that rare quality of understanding of the music and, most importantly, what is happening between the lines and staves. It is dangerous to predict - for all I know, he may want to become a dentist - but a fine career as a performer awaits him.
In addition to the Beethoven Opus 111, Mr. Alpers traversed the problematic landscape of the Sonata in F Sharp Minor, Opus 11 of Robert Schumann. Critics have always been divided about this piece (...), and it takes a strong hand and an old soul to pull it off successfully. Mr. Alpers was just the man for the job. Seemingly unconcerned with the trains loudly whizzing by, he spent much delicate effort creating just the right mood for the aria movement, an homage to the composer's beloved Clara, only to have his intricate construction ruined by an egregious cell phone that rang many times near its conclusion. Visibly shaken, Mr. Alpers ran off of the rails a couple of times in the difficult scherzo that followed, but righted himself in time to prevent any significant damage.
As a totality, this was music making of the highest order. Remember this name: Hinrich Alpers."
(New York Sun, March 2008)
"A poet in every octave " (Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 4)
"It was the evening of Hinrich Alpers who brilliantly mastered the most suble challenge among the Beethoven concertos and precisely hit the mark in his lyric swing, the rich figurations and fine tone with sensuousness and light pathos."
(Allgemeine Zeitung Uelzen, February 2008)
"Powerful, mighty and clear"
"Also Grieg's Piano concerto stirred up one's blood, and this was due to young pianist Hinrich Alpers who was not here by coincidence. Having won the 2004 "Concours Grieg", he can be identified easily as Grieg expert. His touch is powerful, mighty and clear, does have edges and contour and yet abandoning himself entirely to Grieg's vibrant passion and ecstactic song, especially in the cadenza."
(Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung, October 2007)
"A poet at the piano"
"Hinrich Alpers convinced his listeners with his unpretentious modesty and unaffected understanding. His conviction was even more impressive considering the challenge and diffuculty of his program. Ferruccio Busoni's ludicrously virtuosic adaption of Bach's famous D minor Chaconne was testimony of Alpers' immense technical skills. He approached Beethoven's late E major Sonata lyrically, poetically, and reservedly, however, always with a round tone. Alpers clarified the work's complexity masterfully, allowing insight into Beethoven's private world of fantasy."
(Lübecker Nachrichten, April 2007)
"Radically compelling"
"An unusual intermezzo: the trio's pianist, 25-year-old Hinrich Alpers performed a solo. And of all things he dared the last Beethoven sonata, op. 111 - and convinced through his youthfully gripping energy while at the same time being deeply sincere. Thus, the maestoso introduction appeared downright chiseled out of the piano. The following "Allegro con brio e appassionato" (fast, with fire and passion) he performed terrifcly. Alpers transformed the thoroughgoingness of compelling form into passionate sensuousness and fiery extasy, something Beethoven in this work had discovered some 100 years before Scriabin. And where the composer back-pedaled, as if to question himself and his work, Alpers touchingly reflected by means of reduced dynamics, tempo and judicious timing.
The final Arietta flourished under his fingers, lost itself more and more intensely in rhythmic extravaganza, in order to finally sink into paradisiacally pure sound. A perfect technique in combination with groundbreaking will of expression made this sonata a spectacular and memorable event."
(Straubinger Rundschau, January 2007)
"When Cage gets bothered by the cellphone"
"Alpers began his packed recital with three Contrapunctus from Bach's "Art of the fugue": Absolutely thrilling was his way of playing Bach, vivid, with a dancing drive and rhythmic spin while at the same time rich in nuances and calmly singing in the fugue's interludes. He found great calmness in John Cage's dreamful, gently arpeggiated "In a Landscape", whereupon a cellphone rumbled right into the silence and gave a rude awakening. Cage might actually even have enjoyed it.
In Rachmaninoffs "Corelli Variarions" the pianist carried on the baroque pulse of the theme fairly into the virtuosic variations, bringing in great pianistic swing and insisting drive by means of clear, concise, rhythmically pointed music-making. At the same time he completely abstained from blurry late romantic sound, in fact, all the more the music could sound in lyrically tender purity.
For the poetry of Robert Schumann Hinrich Alpers has a particularily inspired and fortunate hand. The inward sensuality of Schumann's f sharp minor sonata as well as Alpers' own song transcription "In der Fremde" sounded highly insouled, he transformed yearning into the finest nuances of sound while at the same time pathos was delicately cushioned. With the first movement's rhapsodic passion mostly attenuated, the Finale after all unleashed all necessary flaring, acute verve."
(Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, January 2007)
"With brilliant fire and felicitous virtuosity" (Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 3)
"'We are well-prepared', Hinrich Alpers said before the concert - which was by no means coquetry, but rather modesty of a young man who has not lost musical humbleness and perhaps therefore has developed so wonderfully in the past few years. Thus, his collaboration with the Göttingen Symphony under the baton of Christian Simonis became an intense dialogue. This terrific accordance commandingly opened up the spiritual dimension and beauty of this abundantly difficult and ambitious concerto.
With brilliant fire and felicitous virtuosity this was music-making of a twenty-two-year-old one whose maturity and musical understanding one might have foreseen - but still one got taken by surprise and overwhelmed after all. Powerful, lucid and impressive even in the softest nuances, gorgeous, dramatic gravity met poetic correspondence in the second movement. One might have wished to leave the house after these grandiose emotions which had made every additional thought superfluous."
(Allgemeine Zeitung Uelzen, March 2004)