Panache is Kantorow’s strength throughout the program, but it is combined with probing emotional maturity, which is rare. I doubt that any prediction will come true for him other than the prediction of greatness. He is well on his way, as evidenced by this release, the best solo piano recital I heard this year.

Kantorow is obviously an outstanding pianist and musician with an agile technique that allows him perfect clarity in the most complex textures, abundant sensitivity and refinement, and maturity well beyond his years...Arrival finally at the 11th Liszt Rhapsody feels like the achievement of an oasis of purest classicism and succinct expression, and provides a showcase for Kantorow’s ability to maintain clarity and poise at breakneck speed.

the main interest of this record lies in his performance of Bartók’s Second Rhapsody Op 1 ... Kantorow finds a chaste beauty

The real highlight for me is Bartók’s Rhapsody for Piano Op. 1...Bartók subsequently pruned the work down to half its original length, but Kantorow gives us the full twenty-minute version, and with such flair and poetry that the young composer’s slightly prolix exuberance never outstays its welcome...it segues quite beautifully into Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody in A minor, which Kantorow despatches with the glittering brio which made his account of Balakirev’s virtuosic Islamey such a joy a couple of years ago.

His performance [of the Brahms sonata] is massively assured, as impressive for its moments of crystalline delicacy, especially in the coda of the finale, as it is for its command of the more extrovert, barnstorming moments.