| The Russian violinist Roman Mints demonstrates a huge talent in this stimulating disc of contemporary works...The emotive demands of the solo part require Mints to scale vertiginous heights: as a showpiece of hysterical lament, Elena Langer's Platch succeeds admirably...
"...With the version [of Schnittke's Concerto for Three] by its dedicatees Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet and Rostropovich currently unavailable this is a highly competitive account." Performance: * * * * * BBC Music Magazine (for |
| "It's not often we hardened critics hear a new piece that can honestly be described as life-enhancing, but Marjan Mozetich's Affairs of the Heart is that rare item that comes around perhaps once in a decade. Not since discovering the likes of the Barber, Korngold, Walton and Castelnuovo-Tedesco (I profeti) concertos in my mid-teens have I been so swept away by a work for violin and orchestra...Roman Mints, usually associated with contemporary music at the cutting edge of post-Modernism, plays with such deep feeling and glowing purity that one cannot help feel that he may in fact be a closet Romantic. After hearing this I would love to see what he might make of Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending. The New Prague Sinfonia under Mikel Toms accompanies with glowing sensitivity, and the Prague 2005 recording is beguilingly velvet-toned.
"Elena Langer's Platch (literally "crying") is a moving lament, dedicated to Mints and mesmerizingly played here...Another first-rate performance rounds out a highly recommended issue, which even the most conservative of readers should urgently seek out."
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| "In its use of solo violin and electronics, Game Over is a virtuoso album."
The Wire (about Game Over) |
| "Violin and electronics has become a much favoured medium: Pierre Boulez’s magisterial Anthemes II comes to mind, but as these pieces demonstrate, Roman Mints is intent on something more immediately expressive. Irish composer Ed Bennett’s Sometimes It Rains draws on traditional Chinese violin techniques, while String Factory deploys Mints’s playing in the opposing of live and recorded sound that veers between the meditative and aggressive. "The other Russian composers featured in the Homecoming Chamber Music Festival that Mints co-founded in Moscow. Tara Buevsky’s Largo Recitare is an elegiac reflection on transience, whereas Alexander Raikhelson’s Criptophonic Piece embodies the concept of ‘homecoming’ in music whose plangency recalls Schnittke. Most impressive are the works by Artem Vassiliev: Story 1 has the violin as observer of an eventful sequence of incidents related by the tape; an abstract scenario that Game Over resourcefully extends through its inclusion of oboe and piano as ‘other voices’, and by the belated emergence of confrontational electronics.
"Mints is to be commended for such an enterprising disk, recorded with pristine clarity and aided by informative notes. I look forward to hearing more from this source."
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| "... his playing is the star of the show. His conviction and sensitivity make a case for violinist as moody film hero, beneath a streetlamp and tuggling on a cigarette." The Strad (about Game Over) |
| "Roman Mints’ new album is an exciting experiment. It seems that he is attempting to find a polymorphic music drawing down from classical traditions, avant-garde musique concrète, ambient electronica, and the soundtracks to movies and video games. The result is a collection of dark soundscapes that are listenable for a broad audience while still innovative and experimental. "There are moments on this album that are so moody that the lights in the room seem to darken and the air to fill with a misty smoke. The effect is eerie and takes the most emotive sounds of the violin reinventing the sonic world that a classical violinist normally inhabits. On the other hand, Mints never strays so far that he loses the thread amid a chaos of sound effects and electronica.
"...This is a really good album. The music is moody, but not overly so. It is experimental while staying approachable...It should appeal to a broad variety of listeners. The generation raised on video games, movies and television will find this a brand of instrumental music that seems relevant to today’s world. It is, quite possibly, a harbinger of the future of classical music."
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| “Recordings to live with…the astonishing, febrile Russian violinist Roman Mints…I’ve played the recordings far more times than mere critical listening requires.” Strings Magazine (about Transformations) |
| “Remarkable young Russian talent…The music here is immediately communicative...performed with conviction and feeling.” Classic CD (about Transformations) |
| “In this performance, the chills are delivered with a special relish for the music's deconstructive enterprise.” Gramophone (about Transformations) |
| "A very desirable CD." MusicWeb (about Transformations) |
| "… a charismatic violinist of enormous potential, bidding fair to become a future star and household name… performances of this calibre make difficult contemporary music speak to doubters. " Seen & Heard (about Transformations) |
| "Mints shows interpretative virtuosity in revealing diverse stylistic words." The Strad (about Transformations) |
| "Full marks to the 23-year-old violinist Roman Mints for devoting his debut disc to contemporary music." Gramophone (about Transformations) |
| "… He plays the spots off these difficult scores, making them not just approachable but utterly absorbing…astonishing performance… " Topica CD Review (about Transformations) |
| "And from Muscovite violinist Roman Mints comes "Transformations," a penumbral recital of late 20th-century Eastern European works." Billboard (about Transformations) |
| "To end, Schnittke's sour and grotesque distortion of Silent night makes a bizarre and thought provoking conclusion to a fascinating recital." Music on the Web (about Transformations) |
| "The very first day produced a charismatic violinist of enormous potential, bidding fair to become a future star and household name. "...Moscow born and trained Roman Mints appeared as a somewhat satanic figure in black, his red hair tied in a ponytail. He exuded confidence as he launched into Sofia Gubaidulina's Der Seiltanzer (tightrope walker) in which the violinist escapes from the domination of the piano into flights of fantasy and virtuosity. The piano writing is no less original, beginning on the strings themselves, developing increasingly menacing bass sounds played with a glass tumbler, these growing to fortissimo by using the serrated bottom of the tumbler and metal thimbles, before the pianist finally settles at the keyboard. The violinist ascends to tremolo double harmonics, all achieved with sure ease by Mints, and abetted by his excellent pianist Katya Apekisheva. He brought to mind Paganini, and were he not restricted by PLG to contemporary music, an ideal foil to precede this piece would have been the Devil's Trill sonata of Tartini!
"...Mints and Apekisheva finished their contribution by despatching Lutoslawski's late Subito with shared verve and virtuosity; performances of this calibre make difficult contemporary music speak to doubters."
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| "The most charismatic playing on Monday came from two Russians, Roman Mints (violin) and Katya Apekisheva (piano). Remember the names." The Observer |
| "Earlier in the year Brian went to Moscow to conduct at the Homecoming Festival. Roman Mints, festival director and violinist with the ensemble
performed alongside 12 other young Russian players. They performed a special piece by Brian entitled The Bird, The Boot, The Clock. Highlights were a beautifully improvised vocal solo extravaganza by Roman. Man that guy can sing!"
http://brianirvine.co.uk |
| “… violinist Roman Mints and pianist Katya Apekisheva - continued with an extraordinary work by Sofia Gubaidulina, Der Seiltanzer (The Tightrope Walker). An exposed solo violin opening led on to eerie scrapings from the inside of the piano, and this tense, fraught piece built gradually and hypnotically to a climax." The Independent |