"At Cheltenham's Piano Day, recitals at the Pittville Pump Room by Llyr Williams and Sarah Nicolls suggested that they are the younger generation's most exciting pianists.... Sarah Nicolls brings a rare and radiant commitment to her focus on the contemporary repertoire. Three works by Niccolo Castiglioni framed her recital, with extremes of percussiveness as convincing as the gossamer delicacy. The very different characters of George Benjamin's Six Canonic Preludes, Shadowlines, were lucidly conveyed, as was the subtle resonance of Oliver Knussen's tribute to Takemitsu, Prayer Bell Sketch. Colin Matthews's Three Preludes, written for Nicolls, exploited brilliantly her pianism as well as her natural expressivity. Nicolls also premiered Brett Dean's Equality... the point was made: Nicolls is equal to both the task and to the men."

"For all her burgeoning reputation as an interpreter of contemporary music, the pianist Sarah Nicolls is not yet a really big name. One might have thought that giving the first British performance of Luciano Berio's 2001 Piano Sonata, one of his last major works, would have been a privilege numerous of her more illustrious colleagues would have relished. So it was a great coup by Nicolls to land this premiere.

Like so many of Berio's works the Piano Sonata has its roots in an earlier, smaller piece, in this case in Interlinea, the little tribute he composed for Pierre Boulez's 75th birthday in 2000. Out of that tiny germ he developed the 25-minute single movement of the sonata, the most substantial of all his solo piano works, using the multi-layered, utterly organic way of development that is so characteristic of his finest music. It is underpinned by a structural logic that is entirely personal yet totally convincing. The opening has an obsessive repeated pitch, which provides the gravitational attraction for a whole constellation of musical ideas. At times it recalls Ravel's Le Gibet from Gaspard de la Nuit; later, for the explosive central section, that reference point becomes a tremolando, before a return to a single pitch centre for the last section.

The musical language is hard-edged and rebarbative, demonstrating that Berio never slackened the rigour of his thinking. The technical demands it makes on the performer are immense, yet Nicolls's performance seemed a model of clarity and accuracy. There was a certainty about every gesture, a cool precision even when the music was at its most explosive. Other pianists will no doubt find other things in Berio's dense writing, but for British audiences Nicolls has provided the first precious guide."

"Conductor Martyn Brabbins [with the London Sinfonietta] should not take it amiss if the laurels go to pianist Sarah Nicolls, whose brilliant lunchtime recital confirmed her status as a rising star. Her Schnittke and Scriabin showed an acute sense of how to balance beautiful sound with structural line. But it was the degree of perception she brought to no less than three premieres - Joseph Phibb's In Passing, Joe Duddell's Scattered Black and White and Benjamin Wallfisch's Three Miniatures - that was so impressive. Nicolls is a genuinely "edgy Brit", and what she does should be happening every week of the year."

Like so many of Berio's works the Piano Sonata has its roots in an earlier, smaller piece, in this case in Interlinea, the little tribute he composed for Pierre Boulez's 75th birthday in 2000. Out of that tiny germ he developed the 25-minute single movement of the sonata, the most substantial of all his solo piano works, using the multi-layered, utterly organic way of development that is so characteristic of his finest music. It is underpinned by a structural logic that is entirely personal yet totally convincing. The opening has an obsessive repeated pitch, which provides the gravitational attraction for a whole constellation of musical ideas. At times it recalls Ravel's Le Gibet from Gaspard de la Nuit; later, for the explosive central section, that reference point becomes a tremolando, before a return to a single pitch centre for the last section.

The musical language is hard-edged and rebarbative, demonstrating that Berio never slackened the rigour of his thinking. The technical demands it makes on the performer are immense, yet Nicolls's performance seemed a model of clarity and accuracy. There was a certainty about every gesture, a cool precision even when the music was at its most explosive. Other pianists will no doubt find other things in Berio's dense writing, but for British audiences Nicolls has provided the first precious guide."

"technical skill was matched by emotional temperament [in] Nicolls's...Janacek Piano Sonata 1.x.1905. There is a weight of history behind this piece...and Nicolls sensed its angst and cries of grief. She rendered the two movements as a balanced structural entity, and gauged that distinctive pulse that Janacek's music has... She was also impressive in Carter's Piano Sonata...confident, fleet and strong, alert to musical atmosphere as well as to the extreme demands of the piano writing"

"Sarah Nicolls provided some of the highlights of the purely acoustic events, in her outstanding recital of piano music by the latest generation of composers, including Luke Bedford and Paul Usher."

"a very capable pianist"

"Sarah Nicolls.. played her seven items brilliantly. The ones I liked best were movements from Paul Usher's Partita – keenly heard clockwork miniatures recalling player-piano studies by Conlon Nancarrow – and Luke Bedford's Catafalque, with its Debussyian cascades of notes."

"Sarah Nicolls is a wonderful inspiration for and champion of new music. She has a rare ability to close-focus on the minutest depths and shadings of piano tone while revealing a long-sighted intellectual grasp of the writing. David Sawer's 1990 solo work The Melancholy of Departure is long, complex and ceaselessly demanding. Yet Nicolls's performance not only lucidly revealed the cunning of Sawer's flickering metamorphoses of figures and rhythms but bonded us to their emotional life as well. She also presented the London premiere of Jonathan Cole's nicely nervy Hitchcock-inspired Trapdoor, and gave an inspired performance of the Four Inventions of Philip Cashian, this year's featured composer."

"Nicolls had poise and spaciousness in her performance"

"In this last of the Park Lane Group's series of contemporary music concerts at the Festival Hall, cellist Robin Michael and pianist Sarah Nicolls gave a programme that traversed an ambitious range of 20th-century classics. Its centrepiece was one of the most searching works of the cello and piano repertoire: Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Intercommunicazione. A study in the fundamental incompatibility of the two instruments, the piece begins with the cello's static, fragile music, which is interrupted by the piano. Michael and Nicolls created a compelling drama. Starting in their different musical worlds, they attempted endless ways of achieving a partnership, at last finding some kind of "intercommunication". But there was no sense of resolution in this final coming together - only a desperate, tragic energy. They were equally convincing in the delicacy of Morton Feldman's Durations II, and Michael gave a vivid solo performance of Elliott Carter's Figment."