Press Review

“...A pianist who immerses heart, soul and everything into her generous artistry, with supremely sensitive and evocative playing. Her technique is dazzling, her grasp of sonority and dynamics, exceptional.”

-Donald Rosenberg, The Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Ms. Inoue’s total dedication to her playing made it by far the best interpretation I’ve ever heard. (Scriabin’s “Black Mass” Sonata). Her playing is organic.She follows the bipolar shifts of the score with feral concentration, abandoning herself to the madness inherent in the cosmic and sometimes cataclysmic visions that arise before the opening theme returns to bring a quiet ending.”

-Stanley Fefferman, Reviewer at Gallery 345

“She has the rarest talent of being able to speak directly from her heart and is able to bring the listener to tears, she is able to touch the most important and sacred strings of the heart.”

-Sergei Babayan, pianist/teacher

[Inoue] apparently has virtuosity to burn, yet reviewers and colleagues tend to emphasize the emotional intensity, integrity, and poetry in her playing, and her gifts as a communicator; she has been called a soulful, even philosophical performer...

[Inoue’s] Bach playing was unclassifiable in the best sense, sounding at once free and anchored—expressive and personal, full of rhythmic and dynamic and tonal nuances that seemed spontaneous rather than calculated, yet still clarifying the music's motifs, phrases, and counterpoint.

Inoue's approach to Bach was unashamedly pianistic while devoid of pianistic clichés; only in the slow sarabandes, for instance, did her right foot approach the sustaining pedal.

She was clearly informed about historical performance practices—witness her convincing accounts of Baroque dances—yet was not doctrinaire about matters like ornamentation and repeats.

For all its structural insight, Inoue's Bach was ultimately about conveying emotional and spiritual messages; it was probing, "inward," though liberated, too, and often joyful...

[Inoue] is a performer plentifully endowed with technique, sensitivity, and a gift for winning over audiences, and in her public concerts here to date she has demonstrated a command of repertoire ranging from Bach to the most virtuosic Romantic works.

But those concerts have been comparatively rare—by choice. A spiritual rather than worldly musician, Inoue chafes at the formality of conventional concerts, and performs more often in private homes and places such as hospitals, the Wilkinson Road jail and the Salvation Army's Victoria Citadel; she has even played an electronic piano on the street.

-Kevin Bazzana, Times Colonist (Victoria)

“Inoue brought a delicate and searching spirituality to the first eight pairs of Shostakovich Prelude and Fugues.”

-Ken Winters, Globe & Mail

“Shoko tackled the first eight Prelude and Fugues by Shostakovich in high-definition sound. Using a wide dynamic range, she placed every note just so only with more shimmer”

-John Terauds, Toronto Star