Liszt: Danse macabre (after Saint-Saëns), S555/F240

“Given that Niu Niu was only 14 when he made this recording last year, his achievement is remarkable. His equable, rounded tone is underpinned by mature technique...Sometimes a big enough response to the music's soaring flight is lacking...Clearly though, here is a fine musical talent.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2013 ***

“in purely digital terms, Niu Niu produces some remarkable playing. He has a wonderful leggiero touch when required: the 'Spinnerlied' from The Flying Dutchman is very fine (how good to hear a youngster revive this old favourite)...Niu Niu is able to breathe fresh life into an old chestnut like the Liebestraum No. 3. So - fantastic fingers, bags of potential but, as yet, no charm.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2013

“Poetic insights? Moments of repose? Those must wait, if they arrive at all, for the prodigy’s mature adulthood...the piano tone is varied and round, never appearing to have been stamped out by a music-making machine. Another good omen could be the modest, almost casual way that Niu Niu often concludes a piece, rarely emphasising the final chord.” The Times, 11th January 2013 ***

“I can wholly recommend this release to lovers of Liszt since it presents much music that is otherwise unavailable” Gramophone Magazine

“It's a phenomenal disc.” BBC Music Magazine, 1997

“Arnaldo Cohen is as poetically and imaginatively intrepid as he's technically coruscating, and all these performances offer refinement and ferocity in equal proportion. Few pianists could identify or engage so closely with music that hovers on the edge of silence or extinction (Nuages gris, La lugubre gondola Nos-1 and 2), or that sparks and sports with a truly devilish intent (Danse macabre, Totentanz and so on). In the Danse macabre the music emerges from Cohen's fingers supercharged with malevolence. On the other hand he can send the F sharp Impromptu spiralling into a true sense of its ecstasy, or momentarily inflect Nuages gris in a manner that accentuates rather than detracts from its abstraction and economy. He makes something frighteningly bleak out of Unstern (or 'Evil Star'), with its savagely dissonant climax and its unresolved hymnal solace, yet is no less at home in Réminiscencesdes Huguenots, dismissing ambuscades of treacherous skips, octaves and every other technical terror with a telling mix of verve and nonchalance.
These, then, are performances of rare lucidity, virtuoso voltage and trenchancy, and all quite excellently recorded.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010