Drawing on the insights shared by Boulez when she studied with him, she unleashes a spectacular, commanding performance that sets the keyboard, and the air around it, aquiver with its intensity. She rides the waves of delirium with both sensitivity and f iery passion, more than justifying the phrase ‘ tour de force’.

[In the Boulez] Stefanovich strives to convey the musicality beneath the manifesto, so to speak. She gives the phrases room to breath and congeal...While Pollini’s gaunt ascetisicm and purposeful bleakness will always have its champions, both Stefanovich’s pianism and Pentatone’s ample sound recording cast this sonata in warm three-dimensional light.

Stefanovich was able to study the sonata with Boulez, and her dazzling performance conveys a sense of total command and authority in every bar. Her mastery of the extreme technical demands of the piano writing one quickly takes as read, but the way in which she shapes and directs the turmoil of the outer movements, clarifying their swirling counterpoint as much as she can, is exceptional...She adds a coda to this hugely impressive release, too: Domenico Scarlatti’s B minor Sonata K87, exquisite and serene after the fury of everything before it.