Soloist, Greenwich Symphony Orchestra, November 2013
In her recent appearance with the Greenwich Symphony Orchestra, piano soloist Terry Eder performed two meltingly romantic works with emotional and interpretive clarity.Terry Eder played like a seasoned master in Ballade in F sharp by Faure. This deeply romantic work [was] handled beautifully by the soloist. Powerful, stirring at times, the orchestra and soloist gave a nuanced, lovely performance.Returning after intermission, Eder performed another romantic work, the Symphonic Variations of Cesar Franck. Opening in strings, the piece showed romantic introspection, with a Chopinesque middle passage, handled beautifully by the soloist. The music turned somber, became powerful, stirring at times, then tender. Eder was given cries of "bravo."
-Greenwich Citizen, November 29, 2013, reviewing Faure Ballade, Op. 19 and Franck Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra

Greenwich Symphony offers a treat
There was a magical moment in the Symphonic Variations by Cesar Franck as the Greenwich Symphony Orchestra, conducted by its music director David Gilbert in the Dickerman Hollister Auditorium at Greenwich High School, was poised between sections of this famous, but infrequently played work. Piano soloist Terry Eder played tolling C-sharps and the very structure of the variations that comprise the work began to dissolve. Eder found a narrative sound on the edges of the orchestral playing and the texture began to float. Commentators even disagree on the numbering of the variations in thissection. When it is played this well it can make one lose track. Eder was good at orchestral interaction. She played the opening of the work with pleading fierceness that seemed a response to each individual statement made by the strings. The finale was given in high-spirits that revealed the distinct humor of this repertoire. This was a program designed for the soloist to make maximum impression. We were given the opportunity to hear her play twice, both before and after intermission. This kind of program design allowed us to hear the soloist play, and then allowed us to reflect on her sound and performance qualities during intermission before hearing her play again. Eder made her first impression by playing the Faure Ballade in its arrangement for piano and orchestra. It is a work comprised of very distinct sections and tonalities, but in the wrong hands it can sound as if it had been marked by yellow highlighter. Eder gave a thoughtful and poetic performance that revealed inner connections among these distinct sections. Its wonderful melodies stuck with us throughout the intermission.
-Greenwich Time, November 26, 2013, Jeffrey Johnson

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, D.C., Recital of Hungarian Music, August 2013
I was at your concert where you played Bartok, Kodaly, and Dohnanyi at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. Since I left Hungary (1975), I haven’t heard so authentic [an] interpretation of the Hungarian music. One could feel the spirit of the Hungarian countryside, hum the songs, and be involved in your music 100 %. Congratulation[s] and thanks.
-Audience Member Kinga Rivesz 

Thank you for a totally absorbing and honest all-too-short one-hour of music this evening. You, a full-blown Hungarian soul, performed each piece with great authenticity, authority, and spirit – and there was that gorgeous, deep brown tone! In the magical treble section of the Dohnanyi you created sparkling colors of quite a different hue! Your inborn rhythm came out strongest in the Bartok Bulgarian-Rhythm Dances. Really astonishing – and riveting. The second movement of his Sonatina I’ve never heard with such pronounced character. The fading away at the end was perfection. The listener knows, even if only subconsciously, that from lots of thought and study, each piece you perform has become ‘yours’ with the greatest respect toward its composer.
- Audience Member Barbara Vazsonyi (Dohnanyi pupil)

Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, April 27, 2009
The Winners of the Ibla Grand Prize International Music Competition
"Pianist Terry Eder presented intense, characteristic Bartok, which she gave a rather seductive, jazzy flavor. Very good control of resources – her performances have an agreeable swing to them."
- International Composer, Jeffrey James Editor, April 2009

Recital, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, June 1, 2008
On June Ist, Artists International presented Terry Eder as the recipient of its 2008 Distinguished Artist Alumni-Winners Award in honor of its 35th Anniversary Season. The concert was given at Zankel Hall instead of the customary Weill Recital Hall. Zankel [is] a larger space that can accommodate a crowd and a full audience was there for her. In Chopin's Barcarolle, Op. 60, Ms. Eder had the necessary tools to make it a winning performance, and in Messiaen's Prelude: "Chant d'extase dans un Paysage Triste," her nuanced tone colors were evocative. The Messiaen was an excellent choice for this hall and program, and the composer would have been very pleased. Bartok would have been equally happy: in his Sonatina, "Three Folksongs from the Csik District" and "Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm" (from Mikrokosmos, Vol. 6), Eder proved she has both the technique and the knowledge of Eastern European music to play this composer with mastery. The dances in particular were mesmerizing and exciting; the pulsating rhythms and dense harmonies were crystal clear yet tension filled, and the sweeping melodies were vocal in nature.  Throughout her interpretations of Bartok, there were subtle, delicate waves of rubato that were personal yet also loyal to the score.
-New York Concert Review, Summer 2008, Anthony Aibel

Terry Eder delivered a wonderful, inspired-and-inspiring recital last night at Zankel Hall.  The thoughtful program was comprised of innovative romantic works. Eder went straight to the heart of Chopin’s world-view, and gave insight not only into the artist himself – the interiority of an exile – but solid commentary on his technique and interpretation as well.  One of Chopin’s last works, Barcarolle in Eder’s hands is laden with the passion that the piece demands.  The right-hand enjoys considerable independence from the left-hand, which Eder manages with ease.  With Eder as the boatman at the helm, this piece “pushes off” not for a round-trip boatride in the present but instead a transformative one-way adventure into the future.  River of no return, such is Life.  Last night’s performance by Eder is the first time I have imagined that this is what Chopin may really have intended to say in this piece – in effect a much ‘darker’, ‘realist’ breed of Romanticism than Barcarolle is normally given credit for. The Debussy L’Isle Joyeuse, composed in 1903, was superb. Eder’s account of the Bartok was admirable for its coloristic depth, [and] pensiveness - phlegmatic, festinating bagpipers and all. Her treatment of Messiaen yielded a fatalism that was fascinating for its existential qualities – despondency that still has energy to speak with friends and friends still gathered around with whom to speak; youthful ‘tristesse’ that gives way to a growing-up and taking measure of what one has learned; newly-attained worldliness that is not endangered or ‘damaged goods’.  Eder’s topicality is genuine and persuasive. Wonderful piano performance.
- Chamber Music Today, June 2, 2008

Recital, Alice Tully Hall, April 22, 2006
An impressively large audience greeted the appearance of pianist Terry Eder on the stage of Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, and those lucky souls were rewarded with an exceptional recital from an artist who transmits the music she plays with an entirely natural authority as well as a good deal of technical horsepower.  I hear a good deal of the late, great Annie Fischer in her openhanded, communicative way with the repertoire.  Ms. Eder is a big pianist with big ideas and a warmly engaging rapport.  There is nothing stingy about her playing, she gives it her all.  I’d rather listen to a fascinating performance full of life and risk than a note-perfect bland reading any day and consequently, I left Terry Eder’s recital a happy man. Ms. Eder opened her recital with the Beethoven Les Adieux Sonata.  The first few measures of this piece require absolute stillness and calm to subdue a sometimes restless audience, as well as the finest possible control of sound and pacing to hold their attention.  She did it beautifully and the arrival of the subsequent Allegro came with the proper shock to the system.  Every musical inflection she applied added to the effect and throughout the whole Sonata she guided her listeners on a genuinely compelling journey through one of Beethoven’s most emotional landscapes. The Fantasiestucke, Op. 12 of Robert Schumann came next.  Ms. Eder brought an engaging freshness to her performance.  Inner voices were gently pointed up without being thrust center stage, basses were carefully placed to achieve maximum richness, and the voicings she applied had obviously been given lots of attention – all marks of a mature artist and musician. Under Ms. Eder’s flying fingers the Dohnanyi Scherzo in C-sharp minor, Op. 2, No. 1, served its purpose, and with the bright banners of Magyar heritage snapping and waving away, it really was pretty entertaining.
- New York Concert Review, Summer 2006, Timothy Gilligan

Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, May 15, 2004
Terry Eder gave an excellent account of herself in her New York Debut piano recital at Weill Hall last May 15 under auspices of Artists International’s Special Presentation Winners Series.  Judging from her biography – her extensive list of teachers include Peter Takács (a protégé of Leon Fleisher); and the late Bálint Vázsonyi (a former pupil of Ernest Von Dohnányi and his pupil Annie Fischer) plus a year’s residency at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest on a “Fulbright” grant to study Hungarian piano music with Zoltán Kocsis – her choice of repertory, and even more importantly, her sensitive, idiomatic interpretations of Dohnányi and Bartok, she has every right to call herself a specialist in this realm. Her substantial, imaginative program commenced with three of the Six Piano Pieces, Op. 41 of Dohnányi.  The excerpts exuded evocative lyricism.  Ms. Eder won our gratitude for choosing these seldom-heard alternatives to the more customary and habitually performed Ruralia Hungarica. Ms. Eder’s perceptive account [of Bartok’s 15 Hungarian Peasant Songs] conjured the requisite spice.  She also delivered a clear, rhythmically secure and solid Beethoven Waldstein Sonata.  Her interpretation was sometimes reminiscent of Annie Fischer’s way; convincing and vigorous.  Ms. Eder actually was more heedful in respecting the (for many) controversial long pedal markings that Annie Fischer, Backhaus, Solomon and Kempff likewise eschew. In the concluding Brahms Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24, Ms. Eder sought a “Romantic” old fashioned view of the work replete with personalized treatment of the many variants.
- New York Concert Review, Summer 2004, Harris Goldsmith