ForumKlassika.ru - November 2009 - Svetlana Petukhova
Daniel Propper performs in Moscow
(The Goldberg Variations)
'The unsentimental, highly thoughtful and clear style of the pianist fully deserved the epithet 'authentic', even though he was not playing on a harpsichord'.

(Encore: Bach, Prelude in E-flat minor) 
'music to keep you awake, to dance to, to assess and think about. This Bach you cannot find tirening, or escape from'

(Beethoven: Piano sonata no. 6)
'The clarity of articulation, the finely-judged and accurate dynamics, the melodic and textural gradations, the liveliness and flexibility of expression were all attractive features of the pianist's style, both in heavy densely-scored passages and in the straight exposition of technical details. These splendid characteristics of the pianist were also evident in the performances of the duets.'

(Grieg: Lyric Pieces)
'Here also Propper managed to create something altogether new - a fantastical world of images in which nothing is mundane, straightforward, following a plot. On the contrary - dreams, unreality, mist. A nostalgia for harmony and beauty, disappearing just as you try to pin it down.'

Gramophone - September 2009 - Jeremy Nicholas
CD Edvard Grieg, Lyric Pieces, op.65, 68, 71. Impressions op. 73, Skarbo, DSK 1086
Daniel Propper brings his survey of Grieg's miniatures to a touching close
"In welcoming last October the second volume of Daniel Propper's projected complete Lyric Pieces, I drew attention to his complete empathy with the composer while wondering if the music was best served in intégrale form."
"Daniel Propper is beautifully recorded, restricting his dynamic range to the even, intimated scale appropriate to the dominant character of these miniatures (...)" "Should you want the complete set, rather than the highlights, look no further."

Gramophone - October 2008 - Jeremy Nicholas
CD Edvard Grieg, Lyric Pieces, op. 54, 57 et 62, Skarbo, DSK 1082
"(Daniel Propper”s) empathy with Grieg’s music is as clear as he is stylistically attuned to its character......His brisk tempi and crisp articulation make him preferable to Gilel’s comparative caution”

Gramophone - September 2008 -  Bryce Morrison
CD Edvard Grieg, Lyric Pieces, op. 12, 38, 43 et 47, Skarbo, DSK 1079
'Gramophone recommends'
"Nimble-fingered and musicianly, (Daniel Propper) shows Grieg's art evolving from simple beginnings into a world of increasing complexity and harmonic richness... His "Little Bird" blithely chirrups...his way with "Erotic" achieves a fine sense of how outward contentment abruptely changes to emotional instability... These finely recorded performances are an admirable antidote to all possible sentimentality."


Musical Opinion - March-April 2007- Max Harrison
Daniel Propper's Goldberg at the Wigmore
"The performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations, which Daniel Propper gave at the Wigmore Hall on 8 january, was a reconciliation of emotion, intellect and refined pianism. Admirable throughout was the exact characterisation of each Variation as in 4 or 14. Likewise, Propper's keyboard skill was everywhere evident, as in the fleet kaleidoscope of 5, 11 or the almost rumbustious French Overture of 16, which marks the beginning of the work's second half. Yet it was the prominence of musical emotion that was my overriding impression, this being most apparent, almost paradoxically, in some of the most 'learned' pièces, such as 15, the Canon at the fifth, or 21, the Canon at the seventh. It was in Variation 25, however, the so-called Black pearl, the height of Bachian romanticism, that feeling was most intensely expressed (...)
(...) Propper gave the score absolutely complete, which is to say with all repeats duly made, while his musical insight and pianistic skill were vividly evident in the ways he varied these repeats. Thus, the connections deepened and broadened so that what earlier had appeared a sequence of character variations became a single body of music. Yet, finally, all complexity was banished and with the repeat of the Aria simplicity was regained."

New Straits Times - Avril 1997 - Flavia de Souza
Kuala Lumpur, Malaisie
Sensitive Swedish pianist
"In the not often played four-movement Grieg sonata, Propper captured the different moods to portray the frolic and mischief, the musical and romantic, the tender and sweet, the poetic and dreamy. (...) Chopin's Twelwe Etudes op. 10 showcased Propper's technical and musical qualities to advantage. (...) Especially beautiful were the chromatic runs of the different etudes. For example, in the second etude, they were exquisitely and delicately executed, and in the third etude, its quiet and beautiful opening theme played with moving simplicity, intimatedly yet not overdone, and in the eleventh to end with a passionate twelfth."