Martin Fröst

"Mr. Fröst is a kinetic player with a vivid interpretive imagination and a sharply focused, warm tone...At times, particularly in the opening Allegro, he preferred to surf the orchestra’s sound rather than to stand out over it, but it was never a matter of not making the solo line heard; rather he was more engaged with the dialogue between the clarinet and the strings than with holding the spotlight. That changed — the scoring leaves little choice — in the bittersweet Adagio, which he played with a ravishing serenity." (The New York Times, August 2012)

"Frost gave a tour-de-force performance of a work that has become his calling card: “Peacock Tales,” by the Swedish composer Anders Hillborg… Slender, agile and an impressive dancer, Mr. Frost gave a riveting performance.” (The New York Times, June 2012)

“His performances the following morning of Béla Bartók's "Contrasts" (composed for Benny Goodman) and Copland's haunting Clarinet Concerto were organic and sublime.” (The Wall Street Journal, June 2012)

“Martin Fröst performed faultlessly. His range of dynamic control was astounding” (Edinburgh Evening News, May 2012)

“Martin Fröst’s phenomenal breath control allows him to spin out melodic lines of gossamer lightness, and the strings of the Australian Chamber Orchestra accompany as if they were listening to him tell a long-held secret, before the buoyant cadenza brings in the first of the many dance rhythms that animate this programme. I’ve never heard it more beguilingly done.” (Dances to a Black Pipe - International Record Review, February 2012)

“Masterful, self-assured, his variable playing and enunciating body language confirms this soloist as one of the best, most recognised respected soloists around the world [...] One observation is surely that some music fans were quietly thanking God that they had been allowed to experience this concert.” (Anzeiger Harlingerland, January 2012)

“In the opening movement alone he displayed the entire register of his great technique. The musical ideas fizzed out of him and formed a brilliant dialogue with the orchestra [...] Thanks to his technical ability, Fröst led the work into new dimensions, showing a mix of playfulness and intellectual depth.” (Ostfriesischer Kurier, January 2012)

“[Anders Hillborg’s clarinet] concerto gains an extra dimension from the remarkable talents of the performer for whom it was written, the composer’s fellow Swede Martin Fröst.” (The Irish Times, October 2011)

“Frost belies his 40-plus years with a near-adolescent vitality and sprightly stage presence. In Anders Hillborg’s clarinet concerto Peacock Tales (without the trappings of mime and masks), his clarity across all registers and a superlative contrast in textures and dynamics revealed a master at work in an almost uninterrupted solo” (The Age, May 2011)

“Anders Hillborg’s Clarinet Concerto Peacock Tales was a splendidly decadent offering from the virtuosic Martin Frost. The Swedish musician threw himself into his performance, uniting kinaesthetic intelligence with his playing to animate Hillborg’s beautiful, arrogant peacock… I enjoyed the visual play with the lighting and the performer’s breath to make the audience and orchestra vanish and reappear at his will.” (Canberra Times, May 2011)

“The program is a display of what Fröst does well, which is just about everything. He makes himself at home at each genre – baroque and romantic, modern and postmodern, klezmer and jazz, country and rock, song and showpiece – and he plays it all with a clear timbre, amazing fingers, dazzling articulation, exquisite color changes, an occasional but tasteful vibrato, and most important of all, soul.” (American Record Guide on Frost and Friends CD, March/April 2011)