Pianist – Michael Csányi Wills

As a pianist, Michael still performs and records regularly, having recorded the complete Weinberg Violin Sonatas with Russian Violinist Yuri Kalnits all released by Toccata Classics to critical acclaim. Volumes 1 & 2 won a “Diapason d”Or” in the French Magazine “Diapason”. In 2021, Volume 3 was nominated for a much coveted ICMA award, and Volume 4 was released in 2022. His latest project is an album of his own Clarinet and Piano music with Principal of the WNO clarinetist Thomas Verity, due for release in 2024 by Rubicon Classics. Also due for a release in 2024, Michael performed Pine Winds with violinist Tatiana Berman by Steve Goss for Deux-Elles Records.

Mieczysław Weinberg: Complete Works for Violin and Piano, Volume Four

‘…Last year, I praised the CPO release of Weinberg’s Violin Sonatas… Well, move over: Toccata Classics has entered the lists with its Vol. 1 of the Complete Violin Sonatas… the Toccata artists (violinist Yuri Kalnits and pianist Michael Csányi-Wills) play with searing intensity… dizzying, breathtaking brilliance, completely at the service of this profound excursion into the cross-section of sound and the human soul. You must hear this.’

Robert Reilly

Michael Csányi-Wills is an ideal accompanist, imaginatively at one with Kalnits and completely in command of Weinberg’s often tricky piano parts: something of his individual quality can be sensed in his handling of the long and deeply expressive solo-piano introduction and desolate little coda of that same Adagio.

Calum MacDonald

The release should provide a most auspicious introduction to Weinberg’s violin music . . . . Strongly recommended for repertoire, performances, and recorded sound.

Robert Maxham

“[Kalnits and Csanyi-Wills] prove uber-sensitive to Weinberg’s harmonic push-pull, and Kalnit’s performance of the Sonata No. 1 for Violin Solo (1964) rolls with the technical punches like a true heavyweight…and I like the way Kalnits resists any temptation to smooth off these structural disjoints, accepting that this material is irreconcilable…Volume 2 soon, please”

Gramophone Magazine