The Spokesman-Review raved of Charlie Albright's season opening concert on September 8, 2018 with Maestro Eckart Preu and the Spokane Symphony Orchestra, writing that "the evening’s most astonishing element in Centralia-born piano soloist Charlie Albright."
"Albright’s tone was crystalline and his voicing wonderfully clear, an effect he was able to maintain with the aid of a technique that appears to have no limits. Albright used his left hand to mine the score for examples of Beethoven’s wit and imagination that were at once entirely novel and yet entirely right. Instead of performing the cadenza which Beethoven left to aid performers who lacked his skill as an improviser, Albright proved that he, in fact, has that skill, and needs no help from anyone. He held the audience in amazed disbelief for more than five minutes, while he explored the rhythmic and melodic content of Beethoven’s score and wove what he found into a musical fabric that was delightful, illuminating and pianistically staggering. In response to the audience’s (and the orchestra’s) clamorous response, Albright returned to the stage to treat us all to an encore that was entirely appropriate to Beethoven, who loved to tweak the nose of propriety, by playing his own virtuoso transcription/fantasy on Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls of Fire.” It surely burned its way into the memory of all who heard it."