BBC Music Magazine (UK)

Playing with fire: David Munk -Nielsen is formidable in his debut album
****

Between Fire & Silence Works by Schumann & Sibelius - David Munk-Nielsen (piano)
OUR Recordings 8.226938 65:30 mins

David Munk-Nielsen has been scooping top awards in Nordic international piano competitions in recent years. For his debut recording, he has homed in on repertoire intimate in nature, yet requiring a sophisticated approach to public presentation - and he rises inspiringly to the challenge throughout.
Kinderszenen, far from being pieces for children, finds the mature Robert Schumann looking back at childhood with more than a little nostalgia. Here Munk-Nielsen strikes a superb balance between innocence, laughter and a hint of tears. Still more satisfying is his ability to project musical architecture and narrative in the Fantasie in C, in which Schumann combined a tribute to Beethoven with the impassioned expression of his love for Clara Wieck.
Munk-Nielsen embraces its formidable pianistic challenges with verve, while taking to Schumann's stream of consciousness like the proverbial duck to water. He goes straight into the flow without pretention his voicing, pace, rubato and structural awareness are rarely short of ideal and his considerable virtuosity is always placed at the service of the work's intensely emotional message. There's stiff competition on disc - witness Nikolai Lugansky's magisterial recent recording - but Munk-Nielsen's open-hearted, communicative directness deserves the warmest of welcomes.
The Sibelius pieces occupy a world more rugged and outdoorsy, a hint of thunder threatening round its corners. Munk-Nielsen, who studied in Finland, seems to identify with this just as easily as with the Schumann. In all, he is a pianist I will look forward to hearing much more of in future. Jessica Duchen. July issue