Bryce Morrison, Gramophone September 2009
Paterson-Olenich plays Rachmaninov with total understanding and conviction
On the Sonata...Everything is reconsidered in playing devoid of all easy options, intent only to cast a burning light on a dark and turbulent inner spirit....[his] playing allows every one of the composer's maelstrom of notes to tell, and [its]magnificent if sprawling edifice is lit by one revelation after another...[the] final pages [of the first movement are] given with such breadth
and understanding you are hearing a pianist born for Rachmaninov.
On the Etudes-tableaux, No.1 in C minor is again so individually characterised...No. 6, launched with an exceptionally menacing opening, is all snarls and snapping teeth...throughout this entire programme you are made frighteningly aware of Rachmaninov's demons, of his confession that "sometimes I think someone will come down the chimney and murder me".
...superbly recorded...No lover of Rachmaninov should be without it.
BBC Radio 3 CD Review Disc of the Week
26th September 2009
…an impressive new Rachmaninov recital from British born pianist Yuri Paterson-Olenich…in which his playing taps into some rather special qualities…Born in Brighton, he studied in Moscow, and even without knowing that, there’s something inescapably Russian about the way he plays Rachmaninov: The sense of free-flowing Romanticism, the surging tempo, the waves of colour…Paterson-Olenich pulls you into the turbulent world of Rachmaninov’s epic First Sonata.