"Soovin Kim won both first prize and the Enrico Costa Prize at the 1996 Paganini Violin Competition, so you know he's got chops...His Strauss has shape, movement, nuances, and colors that are absent from [others']. This is nearly as fine as Gidon Kremer's revelatory account (Jan/Feb)...The Bartok sonata is at least as fine as the Strauss and ranks with the finest recordings ever made of this work. I is energetic and full of mystery and color. II is dark and brooding, and III is ferocious. Despite the sonata's length (about 33 minutes), Kim and Denk have no problem holding the listener's attention. This is due just as much to Denk's intelligent pianism as to Kim's sensitive playing."

"Soovin Kim and pianist Jeremy Denk played Faure's Sonata in A, Op. 13 with extraordinary polish and intense elegance, trading phrases as if they shared a heartbeat."

"Kim's coloration of the music's contrasting voices emerged like a cathedral of musical architecture traced in the air through the power of suggestion."

"Violinist Soovin Kim gave the full measure of the Chaconne from J.S. Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor. In a more than 10-minute displaythat coupled musicality with technique, Kim traced a long, melodic arc over a rich, repeated theme at the lower registers."

"I didn't miss a note from the soloist, Soovin Kim, who offered a very lyrical-minded account of the venerable piece...He took lots of time with the first movement, relishing its most inward and poetic utterances; it was the same with the second, which floated by as if in a dream. The finale danced nicely, if at a rather gentle clip."

"Kim's tone was typically warm and radiant, but his trills have never been so musical, rising naturally out of the pitch like heightened vibrato...Together, their blend was subtler and more mellow...than any I've heard. Synchronization was telepathic."

"He plays with an effortless dexterity and cool matte tone that can take on a brilliant luster, making him a superlative soloist for the melodious collection of suave showpieces he's playing: Saint-Saens' Introduction and Rondo Capricioso, Rachmaninoff's Vocalise, Massenet's Meditation from Thas and Sarasate's Gypsy Airs and Carmen Fantasy. ... [At] Friday's performance at West Palm Beach's Kravis Center, Kim tossed off the technical tricks -- whether the lilting bowings of the Saint-Saens or the Carmen Fantasy's whistling harmonics -- as if they were child's play. He sailed through everything with unforced fluency and barely a blemish, and gave Gypsy Airs that indispensable incandescent soaring."