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REVIEWS "CLAVICHORD VIRTUOSO Joan Benson gave a lasting impression to a large audience.... Not only did she delight them by the immaculateness of her brilliant passage work amazing dynamic shadings, and nuances of touch. Her performance was likewise marked by lively articulation, sustained musical intensity, a delicate and compelling sense of rhythm and by her overall conception of the music."
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"A demonstration of unusual expressive possibilities that one rarely has the opportunity to hear."
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This music was played with great artistry, sensitivity and devotion by Ms. Benson. This recital was an oasis of inspiration."
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"The American clavichord specialist Joan Benson played with vivid musicianship.... Her performance was lifted to a level of perfection by her clear phrasing, lively rhythm, and all the power of musical accentuation possible on this delicate instrument. Afterwards it seemed very strange to return to everyday life with its usual dimensions of sounds.... Listening to the lovely and noble music is worth the adjustment."
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"Here, for once, was playing on antique instruments and in antique idiom that matched and even surpassed the finest today's concert stage has to offer."
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"Joan Benson played with unparalleled sensitivity, immaculately clear and rich in delicate nuance. Exquisite is the pianissimo and exceedingly beautiful is the music she moulds from the keys."
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"Joan Benson played with genuine empathy and technical brilliance. She traced and brought out all the nuances of the expressive and elegant music by J.S. Bach's sons. Her playing, with its art of phrasing, fascinated the listeners."
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"JOAN BENSON STARS. For those attending this year's Bach Festival concert by clavichordist Joan Benson, the memory of this unique concert will long remain If you have never heard the intimate tone of the clavichord, you have missed something, especially when the performance is as masterful as that by Joan Benson. Joan Benson's performance ranks with the finest of the Baroque keyboard specialists I have heard. One is immediately assured that performances such as these reflect the Baroque tradition at its best."
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"ELECTRlFYlNG EXPERIENCE - Joan Benson is a musician of acute sensitivity. To hear her play is a musical experience of a high order Joan Benson brings the "singing tone" of the textbooks to life with extraordinary intensity and control. She penetrates to the center of meaning, knows what every measure, every note is for. She cannot play an arpeggio without giving it all manner of finer shades of feeling.... She never loses sight of the relation of the detail to the whole purpose.... By her intensely felt rhythm she charges her phrases with electricity. It was in the Mozart era that Benjamin Franklin was bringing it down from the sky. Joan Benson brings her electricity down from an upper region of inspiration. Her audience responds with intense concentration."
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"UNUSUAL, UNFORGETTABLE CONCERT - The most delightful surprise of the evening was hearing Mozart and Haydn played on a piano built during Haydn's lifetime... Mozart, with his particularly close and personal relationship to the piano, benefits perhaps more than any other composer by being heard on an instrument of his time... Her feeling for nuance, delicacy and drama seems to come from a deep understanding of the instruments she plays, as well as of the composers whose music she performs."
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"Benson brings to the clavichord a free, improvisational style full of a passion that never quite exceeds the narrow, but infinitely subtle, limits."
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"Joan Benson is one of the few experts on the clavichord of modern times. The American artist displayed all of her capabilities in works by Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach... She completely fulfills C.P.E.Bach 's famous book, "The True Art of Keyboard Playing." She declaimed so clearly and shaped the tones in such a diversified way that each 'Affekt" (mood) found its perfect expression. Joan Benson's art of rubato and her way of improvisation gave a masterful interpretation to the violently emotional Fantasie in C minor, a peak in clavichord literature."