The Age [Australia]
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Fung has a sterling technique and displayed full control of [Rachmaninov Paganini Rhapsody’s] abrupt shifts from silky romanticism to percussive bursts of energy, remarkable for a young artist handling this taxing score that gives no shelter for the occasional awkwardness or indecisiveness.
The pianist's welding of dynamic attack with expertly considered emotional reactiveness made this the outstanding performance of the series. Clive O'Connell
The American Record Guide
CD Recording: Evening Conversations [Yarlung Records]
My reviewing process has produced an overall favorite, and that is David Fung. Consistently good from start to finish, his playing impressed me for its phrasing and musicality. His disc also had the best new discovery (to me) in the Tan Dun Eight Memories in Watercolor, Op. 1. This 15-minute set of pieces is clearly influenced by Debussy and Ravel, but shows surprising originality nonetheless. Whereas the French may have written to evoke oriental music, I find the reverse true with these pieces. They stem from oriental roots, but evoke the impressionism we associate with French music at the beginning of the 20th Century. His five Rachmaninoff Preludes are a well-chosen consecutive group (Op. 32:8-12) centered by 10, the big B minor, probably the best of the 24 (it was said to be the composer's favorite). Add in Chopin's beautiful C-sharp minor Nocturne and Schumann's Arabesque and Kinderszenen, and it is clear that Fung's heart and soul belong in the romantic era. The variety of his touch and articulation is well displayed in this music. Both the opening Mozart and closing Scarlatti have romantic overtones, and I like that. I shall return to this recording many, many times and will watch for future releases from this talented artist. James Harrington
Audiophile Audition
CD Recording: Evening Conversations [Yarlung Records]
... For me, the recital’s variety and breadth of palette rivals the kind of pianistic spectrum the late Shura Cherkassky would champion.
I concur that Fung elicits some exquisite sounds from his Steinway instrument, brilliantly captured by Producer and Recording Engineer Bob Attiyeh. The recital itself presents almost limitless opportunities for Fung to display varieties of touch and attack, although his main ethos lies in the Romantic spirit.
... Pearly eroticism infiltrates Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, with its abbreviated allusion to Chopin’s F Minor Concerto. Anyone familiar with the film classic The Pianist will embrace this performance as authentic. Fung has an immediate grasp of the large gestures in Rachmaninov as well as his tender rhetoric... Like Rachmaninov the composer and pianist, Fung has a clear fondness for Schumann, in poetic evidence via the nostalgic Arabesque and the ingenuous set of Children’s Scenes.
The “Classical” side of Fung’s talent, his capacity for crisp, brilliant resonance and direct phraseology, shines in the Mozart Fantasie and the three sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti. Gary Lemco
The Australian
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Since winning the 2002 ABC Symphony Australia Young Performer of the Year Award, pianist David Fung has developed an international profile and his performance of the Ravel demonstrated why that is so. Virtuosic and sensitive in equal measure, he brought impish flourish and a light touch to the jagged outer movements and a sense of gentle momentum to the Adagio’s mesmerizing meanderings through melancholy and longing. Eamonn Kelly
The Citizen [South Africa]
Fung’s performance [of La Valse] was so electrifying that one did not miss the orchestral coloring of the original. Michael Traub
Classic Melbourne [Australia]
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
...the overwhelming impression was of the brilliant performance by youthful soloist David Fung. From the outset there were pyrotechnics from the pianist and a similar frenetic sound from the orchestra as in the Gershwin. Suzanne Yanko
Cleveland Classical
The Cleveland Orchestra, Blossom Music Festival
David Fung, making both his Cleveland Orchestra and Blossom debuts, played the solo part with Apollonian clarity and understatement (sometimes vanishing momentarily into the orchestral texture). His expressive playing in the Andante was everything you could wish for, and the concluding Rondo was charming and buoyant.
The Blossom audience loved Fung’s performance and wouldn’t let him go. He finally returned to the Steinway for a dashing, infectious encore: the Presto from Mozart’s Piano Sonata in F, No. 2. Daniel Hathaway
Crescendo Magazine
National Orchestra of Belgium, Palais des Beaux-Arts
Brahms’ Concerto in B-flat Major Op. 83 is overtly demanding, dense and particularly challenging because of its length. In the first movement, Fung rivaled the orchestra in sound and sonority. His sound was round and full, but never excessive. He demonstrated a wide palette of colors and had full command over the notoriously technically demanding piano part. In the second movement, Fung had a simplicity of expression, free of pathos that is inconsistent with the movement. He followed the orchestra, listening to their offerings without conflicting with the overall orchestral mass. The third movement was simply divine, supported by an inspired and measured ‘cellist. Fung immersed us into a world of delicacy and finesse. The last movement was cheerful, playful and very energetic. Fung never stopped being "inside" the music for one minute - not a single moment of hesitation. Neither his smile nor his concentration eluded for even a second. François Mardirossian
The Edinburgh Guide
Edinburgh International Festival, Queen’s Hall
David Fung is prodigiously talented. As a pianist he is clearly drawn to the extrovert and fantastic in the virtuoso repertoire, which he plays without apparent difficulty, and from memory of course; according to the programme notes he originally studied medicine; he also plays violin and viola to concert standard - yet he is still in his early twenties. He probably does ten more impossible things daily before breakfast.
Each of the twenty [Rachmaninov Corelli] variations was strongly characterized and the way in which they often link was neatly accomplished. David Fung particularly brought out Rachmaninov's chromatic tricks, which give a modernist feel to his later works. He demonstrated the variety of texture and mood that Rachmaninov could conjure, ranging from exquisite to violent.
Ravel's original solo-piano version of La Valse (which David Fung described as 'a fun piece' though acknowledging its darker aspect) was even more impossibly virtuosic. After an opening which he made sound orchestrally colourful, we were treated to a whirlwind of glissandi, great clusters of chords, and - as he had warned us - 'bombs going off'.
David Fung made [Liszt’s B-minor Sonata] spell-binding, from the hushed opening, through splendid double-octave passages, the singing tone and graceful decoration of Andante sections, the drama of the long Development, and the crystal-clear fingering of the fugal scherzo - to a perfectly paced conclusion which quietly recalls the opening. In all this he subordinated his great technical skills to give prominence to the work's overall shape.
He then quickly and nonchalantly gave two encores to a wildly enthusiastic audience. Jonas Green
Le Libre [Belgium]
Orchestra Royal de Chambre de Wallonie
Australian David Fung, arrived on stage like a star, relaxed and laughing with the conductor, while acknowledging the orchestra before his performance of the Concerto No. 21 in C major [by Mozart]. Although his playing was hyper-articulated and hypertonic, he produced clear and beautiful sounds that were never harsh. In the Allegro, Fung was committed, risk-taking and brilliant, featuring an original cadenza in the style of Beethoven. The Andante was lyrical and expressive, and for once, without an excessive ounce of sentimentality. Carrying out an intense dialogue with the orchestra, Fung’s feverish finale was marked by fearlessness, some insolence (in the cadenza) and harmless excitement. Martine D. Mergeay
Maariv [Israel]
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
Fung is a special breed of storyteller who keeps the public spellbound from the first note to the last. His ability to summon extraordinary colors and nuances from the piano reveals his status as a remarkable artist. David Fung was sensational. Ora Binur
The News Tribune
Symphony Tacoma
Not so Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2, saved for last (a staging issue, probably) and definitely the best. Fung doesn’t make a big sound, but his wit and vivacity more than compensate. Sudden switches to piano, luxurious triplets, playful staccato runs that tiptoed into nothing made the first movement a joy, with the orchestra handling Beethoven’s mood swings with style. In the second movement, Fung gave his melodies an aching nostalgia, barely there, with a long pedal resonance that hinted at the Romanticism that was to come to Beethoven’s Vienna in the form of Gustav Mahler. A sweet oboe played lyrically over clouds of piano arpeggios into a spellbinding dialogue. The finale was another gallop, with Fung dancing his heels with glee and alternating quicksilver runs with comic pauses.
A Scarlatti sonata made an odd choice of encore, but showcased Fung’s highly original musicality. Rosemary Ponnekanti
The New York Times
Weill Hall, Carnegie Hall
Many Prokofiev scores try to contain modernist, sometimes barbaric impulses within New-Classical forms, in a harmonic language that for all its dissonance is essentially tonal... [That tension] came through in the Sonata No. 5, which Prokofiev called the “most chromatic of all his compositions” and which was here given an articulate and stylish performance by David Fung. Anthony Tommasini
The Plain Dealer [Cleveland]
The Cleveland Orchestra, Blossom Music Festival
In the midst of a weekend of 20th century Anglo-Francophilia, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C, with young pianist David Fung, was something of an odd man out, with its Rococo sheen and classical poise. Fung, making his Cleveland Orchestra debut, proved an agile and alert interpreter of Mozart's crystalline note-spinning. His sensitive reading of the famous Andante was the highlight of the concerto, and Francis directed the accompaniment, quite innovative for its time, with a fine ear for balance. Mark Satola
The Scotsman [Scotland]
Edinburgh International Festival, Queen’s Hall
"This is one of my favourite pieces. As I play I imagine slowly changing patterns on a kaleidoscope entangling with the melody." A relaxed David Fung began a stunning performance by thanking us for coming, then introducing Schumann's Arabeske Op 18, his joyously limpid playing conjuring up skittering dragonflies over a loch.
The diverse emotions inside the intense structure of Rachmaninov's Variations on a Theme of Corelli were revealed with the technique of a glass blower, pushing deep and out without breaking limits.
In Fung's hands the deep subversive textures of Ravel's La Valse became a dance of death, the music continually teetering to contain the piece's spiralling frantic moods.
Having set us up to visualise the first three pieces with his own images, Fung left Liszt's Sonata in B Minor as music alone. As his fingers sculpted this dark masterpiece, full of musical paradoxes, playing the piano like a potter deftly shaping clay on a wheel, you were inside a startling world of pure sound. Jan Fairley
The Sydney Morning Herald
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Former ABC Young Performer of the Year David Fung was soloist in Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G. Fung's charged pianism was best in the concerto's breakneck finale and his fluid encore of Earl Wild's virtuosic Etude arrangement of the Gershwin classic Embraceble You. Martin Duffy
The Washington Post
The Kennedy Center
The young Australian pianist David Fung opened his Washington Performing Arts Terrace Theater recital on Saturday with some pretty ravishing Scarlatti. In three sonatas culled from the 550 late-career miniature masterpieces Scarlatti composed, Fung showed a true poetic sensibility. He offered crystalline phrasing that would not have been out of place on the harpsichord — an instrument he also happens to play — while drawing hushed, beautifully rounded tone from his Steinway. Interleaving those works with Scarlatti-inspired sonatas by contemporary composer Samuel Adams (son of John) — which offered witty deconstructions of the Baroque sonatas surrounding them — was a canny bit of programming, and Fung played the newer works with clear affection.
A similar element of poetry informed his exquisitely sculpted readings of Mozart’s Sonata No. 17 and Schubert’s “Wanderer Fantasie.” But there was a sense in this music that volume was intentionally subdued, and that the volatility and strutting grandeur that ripple through certain pages of the score were tamed to fit a polite, Classical conception of Schubert’s work, rather than a more robust, Romantic one. Fung’s understated interpretation certainly worked, but other pianists have conjured more edge-of-the-seat thrills in this music, without sacrificing the kind of rapt musing that Fung so memorably drew out in the introspective second section of the piece.
It was hard to predict what a subtle tone-painter like Fung would make of Rachmaninoff. But in the Op. 32 Preludes No. 8 and 10, there was a notable (if not exactly barnstorming) broadening of power and dynamic range. These pieces, too, benefited from Fung’s thoughtfulness and touchingly immediate way with phrasing, and he was fully inside the Russian composer’s idiom. Fung’s own arrangement of Ravel’s “La Valse” (augmenting Ravel’s solo version with material from the two-piano and orchestral versions) was more of a mixed bag — at times more episodic than flowing, at others more concerned with clarity than intoxicating atmosphere. But, more often than not, it was simply gorgeous. Joe Banno
Yedioth Ahronoth [Israel]
[Fung] delivered Beethoven’s Bagatelles as if he were telling an exquisite story, demonstrating a supreme maturity and a rare talent for the music of the classical style. Hanoh Ron