20 essential chopin recordings - wqxr

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PENGUIN ROSETTES

Chopin: 4 Ballades

Murray Perahia (piano)

Release Date: 30th Aug 2001
Catalogue No: SK64399
Label: Sony
Length: 59 minutes
Awards: Gramophone Magazine - 100 Greatest Recordings; Gramophone Awards - 1995 - Winner Instrumental; Pinguin Guide - Rosette

"The Gramophone Good CD Guide awarded this its highest accolade, denoting "an unrivalled version, a cornerstone of the catalogue", adding that "this is surely the greatest, certainly the richest of Perahia's many exemplary recordings". Hard to disagree when faced with such consummate artistry." - The Gramophone Classical Musical Guide.



The Art of Sviatoslav Richter

Sviatoslav Richter (piano)

Release Date: 13th Sep 2004
Catalogue No: 4762203
Label: DG
Awards: Pinguin Guide - Rosette

Tchaikovsky: Morceaux & Chopin: Nocturne No. 20

Mikhail Pletnev (piano)

Release Date: 11th Apr 2005
Catalogue No: E4775378
Label: DG
Length: 69 minutes
Awards: BBC Music Magazine - July 2005 - Instrumental Choice


"Pletnev brings Tchaikovsky's music vividly to life" — BBC Music Magazine, 1st July 2008

"Pletnev is all over the final, unbuttoned trepak in grand style, and he certainly makes the glissandos swing. A fresh, unfettered account of Chopin's C sharp minor Nocturne is offered as an encore to this urgently recommended recital." - The Gramophone Classical Musical Guide.



Chopin: Waltzes & Impromptus

Arthur Rubinstein (piano)

Release Date: 10th May 2004
Catalogue No: 82876594222
Label: RCA
Series: Classic Library Series
Length: 70 minutes
Awards: Pinguin Guide - Rosette



Chopin: Waltzes Nos. 1-14, etc.

Dinu Lipatti (piano)

Catalogue No: 5669042
Label: Warner Classics
Series: Great Recordings of the Century
Length: 64 minutes
Awards:  Gramophone Magazine - 100 Greatest Recordings; Pinguin Guide - Rosette


"As a former pupil of Cortot, it wasn't perhaps surprising that Lipatti always kept a special place in his heart for Chopin. And thanks primarily to the 14 Waltzes, played in a non-chronological sequence of his own choosing, it's doubtful if the disc will ever find itself long absent from the catalogue. Like the solitary Mazurka, they were recorded in Geneva during his remarkable renewal of strength in the summer of 1950. The Nocturne and Barcarolle date back to visits to EMI's Abbey Road studio in 1947 and 1948 respectively. Just once or twice in the Waltzes you might feel tempted to question his sharp tempo changes for mood contrast within one and the same piece – as for instance in No 9 in A flat, Op 69 No 1. However, for the most part his mercurial lightness, fleetness and charm are pure delight. His Nocturne in D flat has long been hailed as one of the finest versions currently available.
And even though we know he himself (one of the greatest perfectionists) was not completely happy about the Barcarolle, for the rest of us this glowing performance has a strength of direction and shapeliness all its own. In fuller contexts there's just a trace of plumminess in the recorded sound." -The Gramophone Classical Musical Guide.



Chopin - Etudes

Nikolai Lugansky (piano)

Catalogue No: 8573802282
Label: Erato
Length: 65 minutes
Awards: Pinguin Guide - Rosette



Pogorelich plays Chopin, Ravel and Prokofiev

Ivo Pogorelich (piano)

Release Date: 3rd Feb 2003
Catalogue No: 4636782
Label: DG
Series: Originals
Length: 72 minutes
Awards: Pinguin Guide - Rosette


"The unpredictable Pogorelich at his very best, accomplishing miracles of tone colour, refinement and control, with a coruscating final 'Scarbo'. The couplings are both piano sonatas: Prokofiev No 6 and the Chopin B flat minor." - The Gramophone Classical Musical Guide.



Chopin: Nocturnes Nos. 1-19, etc.

Arthur Rubinstein (piano)

Release Date: 11th Feb 2008
Catalogue No: 5096682
Label: Warner Classics
Series: Great Recordings of the Century
Length: 2 hours 35 minutes
Awards: Pinguin Guide - Rosette


"A generous selection of Rubinstein's early Chopin recordings shows a seemingly effortless, intuitively musical response to each piece. Sound quality is not an issue when faced with such great performances" - BBC Music Magazine, 1st May 2008

"A distinguished series of beautifully presented reissues" - Gramophone

"The current remastering by Andrew Walter has removed almost all the background noise, and the mono piano recording is miraculously real and vivid." - The Pinguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music


Stokowski

National Philharmonic Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski

Catalogue No: CACD0529
Label: Cala
Length: 78 minutes
Awards: Pinguin Guide - Rosette


Chopin: Les Sylphides, etc.

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan

Catalogue No: 4291632
Label: DG
Awards: Pinguin Guide - Rosette

Chopin: Piano Concertos

Christian Zacharias (piano)

Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne

Release Date: 11th Apr 2005

Catalogue No: MDG3401267

Label: MDG

Series: Gold

Awards: Pinguin Guide - Rosette

Chopin - Songs

Urszula Kryger (soprano) & Charles Spencer (piano)

Release Date: 2nd Oct 2006

Catalogue No: CDH55270

Label: Helios

Awards: Pinguin Guide - Rosette

"Chopin's songs might struggle to secure a regular place in the repertoire but at budget price there's no excuse not to encounter a master miniaturist painting on less familiar canvasses." (3/5 stars).

 - BBC Music Magazine, November 2006

"A rare opportunity to sample Chopin the song composer, here performed with real feeling by Polish mezzo Urszula Kryger. The dark core of melancholy in Kryger’s voice is fine-tuned to the Slavic melodic contours of a song like The Sad Stream. And her instinctive grasp of both musical and verbal inflection makes for a beautifully understated performance of Melodya, Chopin’s last, heartfelt song of exile" - Gramophone

FUENTE: prestomusic.com

FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN - A BICENTENARY FOCUS (Gramophone)

Commentary by Jeremy Nicholas; recommendations by Gramophone

Few composers command such universal love as Chopin; even fewer have such a high proportion of their entire output remaining in the active repertoire. He’s the only great composer whose every work involves the piano – no symphonies, operas or choral works and only a handful of compositions that involve other instruments. He wrote just under 200 works; 169 of these are for solo piano.

The music

More than any other, Chopin is responsible for the development of modern piano technique and style. His influence on succeeding generations of writers of piano music was profound and inescapable. He dreamt up a whole range of new colours, harmonies and means of expression in which he exploited every facet of the new developments in piano construction. The larger keyboard (seven octaves) and improved mechanism opened up new possibilities of musical expression. He possessed an altogether richer and deeper poetic insight than the myriad pianist-composers who flourished during his lifetime. 

Chopin was one of the first to write music for the piano in terms of the piano. Beethoven often tried to be orchestral in his piano writing, Schubert to be vocal, whereas Chopin was always completely and convincingly pianistic. Few of his compositions translate successfully to other instruments. Interestingly, this most romantic of Romantic composers disliked the association and this is borne out by the fact that, unlike his contemporaries Schumann and Liszt, his inspiration never came from literature or painting. 

Unlike any other great composer, Chopin achieved his claim to immortality not by writing large scale works but in miniatures (the nocturne, prelude, étude, mazurka and so forth) though these frequently  encompass emotion of tremendous power. Even his two concertos and three sonatas are really shortish pieces sewn together into larger classical forms, forms which, he realised early on, were not his strength.

He was hypercritical of everything he wrote and what we hear played with such inevitability and apparently effortlessly flowing melody cost him much. George Sand described him going frantic trying to capture on paper what he had in his head, crossing out, destroying, beginning afresh, scratching out once more, re-working a single bar countless times. There are few works which do not seem genuinely inspired. The seemingly inexhaustible variety of moods and ideas, endless supply of beautiful melodies and poised discrimination combine to make his oeuvre one of the high points of human creation.

The life

1810 The greatest of all Polish composers had a French father, Nicholas, who had gone to Poland  as a young man and become a tutor to the family of Countess Skarbek at Zelazowa Wola. His mother was the Countess’s lady in waiting, herself from Polish nobility. This duel nationality is reflected in Chopin’s music – the epic struggle of the Poles and the refined elegance of the French. Shortly after Frédéric’s birth, the family moved to Warsaw where his father had a teaching post. 

1816 Chopin had his first piano lessons from Adalbert Zwyny, a local all-round musician, and made his public debut at nine.

1825 He became a piano student of Joseph Elsner, director of the Warsaw Conservatory. It’s largely thanks to Elsner and Zwyny that Chopin developed into the original creative force he became: they let him develop in his own way.

1828 A friend of Chopin’s father invited him to Berlin and the following year he gave two concerts in Vienna, including his Variations on Mozart’s "Là ci darem la mano" after which Schumann made his famous judgement: "Hats off, gentlemen! A genius".

1830 The fading attractions of Warsaw, further diminished by his unrequited love of a young singer, persuaded him to leave Poland. Before he left in November, his old teacher Elsner presented him with a silver urn of Polish earth with the admonishment "May you never forget your native land wherever you go, nor cease to love it with a warm and faithful heart." The urn was buried with Chopin when he died.

Despite a Polish revolt against Russian rule soon afterwards, Chopin headed for Vienna (probably he would have been too physically frail to serve in the army in any case).

1831 After some time in Stuttgart, intending to travel to London, he stopped off in Paris. It remained his home for the rest of his life.

1832  His Paris debut in January was not a success. The Parisians did not take to his playing or music immediately and Chopin thought for a time of leaving for America. His destiny was changed by Prince Radziwill who introduced him to the salon of  Baron Jacques de Rothschild. Here, Chopin triumphed and from then on his career as a composer (and highly paid teacher) was a story of unbroken success.

Chopin was a sensitive, fastidious man who never enjoyed exactly robust health. The rich, privileged world of the aristocratic and wealthy salons not only appealed to his snobbish instincts (he liked to mingle with money and beautiful women) but provided the perfect ambience for his music and his particular style of playing. Audiences admired his cantabile (singing) touch. Where Liszt was the thunderous, virtuoso showman, Chopin was the refined, undemonstrative poet, noted for his rubato, the effect whereby notes are not played in strict tempo but subtly lengthened and shortened ‘like a trees’ leaves in the breeze’, as Liszt described it.

1837 His first great love in Paris was the flirtatious daughter of Count Wodzinska. The family put a stop to the affair. His next was perhaps the most unlikely woman of his circle: Aurore Dupin (Mme Dudevant), the radical, free-thinking novelist who called herself George Sand. By no means good-looking (photographs bear witness), she smoked cigars and wore men’s clothing. "What a repellent woman she is," was Chopin’s reaction when he first set eyes on her. "Is she really a woman? I’m ready to doubt it." Nevertheless she exercised a fascination for Chopin and a relationship developed which  lasted for ten years, a mother figure who became the love of his life. One of her personal letters implies that the physical side of their life was embraced less than enthusiastically by the composer.

1838 George Sand travelled to Majorca with her son and daughter and Chopin joined her there. Instead of the paradise they hoped for, it turned into a disaster with inhospitable and antagonistic locals, damp, wet weather and the breakdown of Chopin’s health. He began having haemorrhages and hallucinations and it was only a prompt departure for the mainland that saved his life (he had another haemorrhage in Barcelona).

1839 For the next few years, Chopin was at the height of his creative powers, respected and internationally famous. 

1841 His health deteriorated, becoming more consumptive year by year.

1848 The increasingly-tense relationship with George Sand came to an end. Sand seemed comparatively unaffected; "Chopin", said Liszt "felt and often repeated that in breaking this long affection, this powerful bond, he had broken his life". A Scottish pupil of Chopin, Jane Stirling, persuaded him to make a trip to England and Scotland with her but this and a few fund raising concerts undermined his health further and when he returned to Paris he became a virtual recluse, too weak to compose or teach.

1849 He gave strict instructions that all his unpublished manuscripts be destroyed. Chopin had a good idea of his worth and was determined that only his best work should survive. He died on October 17 from consumption and was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery next to his friend Bellini.

The works

Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante in E flat (1830)

The polonaise had long been out of fashion as a dance form when Chopin revived it. He wrote 18, all for piano solo except two: his Introduction and Polonaise brillante (for cello and piano) and this one. It’s a good example of what Chopin was writing at the age of 20, yet this was to be the last of his six compositions using an orchestra. Both parts of the work are heard as often as not as a piano solo these days. The Polonaise (and you’ll hear within a few bars why it’s called grand  and brillant) is preceded by the nocturne-like Andante (“It makes one think of a lake on a calm bright summer day,” wrote one commentator). Spianato? Spiana is Italian for a carpenter’s plane and so it becomes an apt description for “planed, level, smooth” music.

Recommended recordings

Richter; LSO / Kondrashin (BBC Legends) Buy CD from Amazon

Arrau; LPO / Inbal (Philips) Download from Passionato Buy CD from Amazon

Four Ballades (1836-42)

“Arias without words”, “poetic stories” – these are the best ways to describe the four masterpieces for solo piano that Chopin called Ballades. Almost every pianist has (or has had) them in his or her repertoire: No 1 in G minor (Chopin’s own favourite) and No 3 in A flat (which Sir Winston Churchill called “the rocking-horse piece” – he was particularly fond of it) are the most heard. No 2 in F has been interpreted as the “struggle between a wild flower and the wind”, while the pianist John Ogdon thought No 4 in F minor was the most powerful of all Chopin’s compositions. Its technical difficulties apparently infuriated Chopin’s contemporaries.

Recommended recordings

Perahia (Sony Classical) Buy CD from Amazon

Kissin (RCA Red Seal) Buy CD from Amazon 

Hough (Hyperion) Download or buy CD from Hyperion

Cortot (Naxos) Buy CD from Amazon

Etudes (1829-34)

There are numerous books of piano etudes (studies), each study devoted to one aspect of technique (the execution of scales, octaves, arpeggios etc). Most of them are boring beyond belief. All that changed with Chopin’s two sets of 12 studies (Opp 10 and 25 as they’re known in the trade) which lifted the ordinary étude into the realm of poetry. Perhaps the most loved is Op 10 No 3 in E (Tristesse), a study to develop expression, turned into a song in 1939 (“So Deep is the Night”). The best-known is a study for the left hand – Op 10 No 12 in C minor (the Revolutionary, composed in 1831 under the impression that Warsaw had been captured by the Russians) which a generation of young music lovers first heard played by Sparky (or was it his magic piano?). But if you dip in anywhere you will come up with a treasure – Op 25 No 1 in A flat (known as the Aeolian Harp), Op 25 No 11 (Winter Wind), for instance, ot the two studies in G flat, Op 10 No 5 (Black Keys) and Op 25 No 9 (Butterfly). Leopold Godowsky went a step further and composer 53 Studies on Chopin Etudes, works of incredible complexity. One of them, which he jokingly called Badinage, is a study made up of the two G flat studies played simultaneously!

Recommended recordings

Perahia (Sony Classical) Buy CD from Amazon

Pollini (DG) Buy CD from Amazon

Fantasie in F minor (1841)

This work, as much as any other, displays every facet of Chopin’s genius. Written at the height of his creative powers, is said to depict (and have been inspired by) a quarrel and reconciliation between Chopin and his paramour George Sand. But everyone will read what he wants into this marvelous work for solo piano, by turns heroic. Melancholic and tender.

Recommended recording

Kissin (RCA Red Seal) Buy CD from Amazon

Fantaisie-impromptu (Impromptu No 4 in C sharp minor) (1835)

This is among the most popular of all piano works, yet Chopin himself thought so little of it that he kept it in his bottom drawer and did not permit its publication (it appeared only after his death). It’s the earliest of the three other impromptus which were published. The middle section (trio) provided two American songwriters with a hit tune in 1919 – “I’m always chasing rainbows”.

Recommended recording

Perahia (Sony) Buy CD from Amazon

Nocturnes (1827-46)

Here is another musical form developed by Chopin. The term nocturne was first coined (in musical terms) by the Irish composer and pianist John Field in 1814, but Chopin “invested it with an elegance and depth of meaning which had never been given to it before”, as the critic James Huneker wrote. The most popular (probably the most popular of all of Chopin’s compositions) is No 2 in E flat, Op 9 No 2. But, like the Etudes, whichever one you alight on will be an exquisite gem – and quite unlike the previous one. 

Recommended recordings

Pires (DG) Buy CD from Amazon

D’Ascoli (Athene) Buy CD from Amazon

Rubinstein (Naxos) Download from Passionato

Piano Concerto No 1 in E minor (1830)

Chopin composed two piano concertos. Both date from early in his career (1829 and 1830). This one in E minor was the second to be written but the first to be published and so designated No 1. In a letter to his friend Titus Wojciechowski, Chopin described the slow movement (Romanza) as, “intended to convey the impression one receives when gazing on a beautiful landscape that evokes in the soul beautiful memories – for example, on a fine moonlit spring night.” The first performance took place in Chopin’s home city of Warsaw on October 11, 1830. It was a huge success: “I was not in the least nervous,” wrote Chopin, “But played as I do when I am by myself.” It was the last time he played in Poland. Three weeks later, Chopin left, never to return. He was then just 20.

Recommended recordings

Pollini; Philharmonia / Kletzki (EMI) Download from Passionato

Argerich; Montreal SO / Dutoit (EMI) Download from Passionato

Rubinstein; LAPO / Wallenstein, NBC SO / Steinberg (Naxos) Download from Amazon Buy CD from Presto Classical

Piano Concerto No 2 in F minor (1829-30)

Introduced by Chopin in Warsaw on March 17, 1830, the Second Concerto’s slow movement (Larghetto) is “possibly on of the greatest pages ever written by Chopin” according to one critic. It was inspired by Constantia Gladowska, a young voice pupil with whom Chopin was madly in love. The concerto itself is dedicated to Countess Delphine Potocka, among the very few people to whom Chopin dedicated more than one piece (her name also appears on the ”Minute” Waltz) and it was she who sang to Chopin on his death-bed.

Recommended recording

Rubinstein; Philharmonia / Giulini (BBC Legends) Buy CD from Amazon

Polonaises (1817-46)

The first two of Chopin’s polonaises (officially No 13 in G minor and No 14 in B flat) were written in 1817 when Chopin was only seven. The character and rhythm of this old Polish dance form attracted Chopin throughout his life and the later polonaises reflect thee hapless condition of his native land, full of defiance and pride. No 3 in A (Military) is one of Chopin’s best-known works, closely followed No 6 in A flat (Heroic) with a “cavalry charge” in the middle. You should also try the Polonaise-fantaisie in A flat, a more extended piece in which Chopin strives to develop the form. Many consider this to be among his most profound and personal creations.

Recommended recordings

Rubinstein (RCA) Download from Amazon

Pollini (DG) Download from Amazon and buy CD from Amazon

24 Preludes (1939)

The prelude was originally an introductory piece of music (the opening movement of a suite, say). Chopin liked to create new forms from old titles and these preludes preface nothing – they are their own self-contained thoughts. There is one written in each major and minor key. Many were composed at Valdemossa in Majorca where Chopin and George Sand spent a few unhappy months. Look out for No 7 in A, No 15 in D flat (Raindrop) and No 20 in C minor (Rachmaninov and Busoni each wrote sets of variations on this, and Barry Manilow used it as the basis for his song “Could it be magic?”). Nos 4 in E minor and 6 in B minor were played on the organ at Chopin’s funeral.

Recommended recordings

Argerich (DG) Download from Passionato

Sokolov (Opus 111) Download from Amazon Buy CD from Amazon

Four Scherzi (1832-42)

It was Haydn who developed the stately ¾ minuet into the scherzo (which means, literally, “joke” in Italian); Beethoven’s scherzos are more bustling, humorous affairs; to Mendelssohn, the scherzo was synonymous with a light-hearted caprice. Chopin saw the scherzo as “breathings of stifled rage and of suppressed anger” according to Liszt. The opening pages of No 1 in B minor demonstrate just that, though its middle section could hardly offer a greater contrast. No 2 in B flat minor is the best known (at one time nicknamed The Governess’s Scherzo, even if the music must have been way above the capabilities of most governesses). No 3 in C sharp minor has a central section that might remind you of a hymn played on the organ. No 4 in E is glittering. Intense and passionate. 

Recommended recording

Pogorelich (DG) Buy CD from Amazon

Piano Sonata No 2 in B flat minor, “Funeral March” (1939)

One of the priceless gems of music, this is known as the Funeral March Sonata because of its celebrated and sombre third movement, played at every state funeral (usually by a military band). It’s followed by a brief final movement in which the whirling right hand plays in unison with the left to create the impression (according to Anton Rubinstein) of “night winds sweeping over churchyard graves”. There is something doom-laden and threatening about the opening two movements as well (just listen to the opening bars of the Sonata and the anxiety behind the first theme). Strangely, though, the last thing you ever feel after listening to the work is depressed. Just the opposite in fact.

Recommended recordings

Argerich (DG) Download from Passionato Buy CD from Amazon

Trpceski (EMI) Buy CD from Amazon Download from Amazon 

Piano Sonata No 3 in B minor (1844)

A flawed masterpiece compared with No 2 (the earlier Sonata No 1 in C minor is far inferior to both and rarely played). The first movement is overflowing with ideas, though the scherzo (which follows) is succinct and graceful; the nocturne-like slow movement is one of weakest but has the effect of building anticipation for the gloriously jubilant finale (a fast rondo) that brings the work to a thrilling conclusion. This is one of the most difficult of all Chopin movements to play and is certainly one of the most effective.

Recommended recordings

Argerich (EMI) Download from Passionato

Kissin (RCA) Download or buy from Amazon

Waltzes

Johann Strauss I was at the peak of his popularity when Chopin arrived in Vienna in 1829. Though Chopin thought those composed by the Strauss family quite vulgar – “I have acquired nothing particularly Viennese,” he wrote, “and I still cannot play waltzes” – he was nevertheless inspired by the form. His efforts are Parisian more than Viennese, “never mant to be danced by ordinary mundane creatures of flesh and blood,” as one commentator put it. Listen out for the Grande valse brillante in E flat, Op 18, the one in A minor, Op 34 No 2 (said to be Chopin’s favourite), the A flat Waltz Op 42 (arguably the best and certainly the most difficult to play) and of course the Minute Waltz. Impossible to play in 60 seconds, even if you rush the more lyrical middle section (which would be criminal). On average it takes about 90 seconds – the shortest (hence the French description “minute”) and most popular of Chopin’s waltzes.

Recommended recordings

Rubinstein (RCA) Download from Amazon Buy CD from Amazon

Lipatti (EMI) Download from Passionato Buy CD from Amazon

FUENTE: Frédéric Chopin – a bicentenary focus

THE 10 GREATEST CHOPIN PIANISTS (Gramophone)

Stephen Plaistow recalls the illustrious recorded history of Chopin's oeuvre and offers a personal view of great Chopin interpreters

In the years since Chopin died perceptions of him have, of course, changed, as they do of all great composers, but here is a singular fact: his popularity has never waned. In lands where people come together to listen to pianists, there has been little of his mature work that has not been constantly before the public. In the 90 years since electrical recording began there has also been little that has not been available on disc. It has been said of him that no other body of work by a great composer has been subjected to such relentless performance.

Perceptions do indeed change. Carl Tausig, the outstanding pupil of Liszt who was probably the first pianist to give all-Chopin recitals, could conceive of the Barcarolle only as a duet for two lovers in a gondola, with a kiss at bar 75. His revision of the E minor Piano Concerto includes re-orchestration and a wholesale rewriting of the solo part ('I am now more than ever convinced that Tausig's early death was the result of supernatural interposition for the extermination of a sacrilegious meddler' - George Bernard Shaw). Benno Moiseiwitsch played Chopin admirably but was accustomed to omit the first eight bars of the finale of the Sonata in B minor because he didn't like them. Horowitz hotted up the ending of the B minor Scherzo by recasting the rushing-upward scale in Lisztian 'blind' octaves (you can hear this on his recording). Several lesser Chopin 'specialists' whom I heard in London in the early 1960s seemed to be in a time warp.

Arthur Rubinstein

By the beginning of that decade Arthur Rubinstein was well established as the elder statesman of Chopin playing. He had an unrivalled authority. When I began working for the BBC, recitals of Chopin were considered to be inappropriate material for the Third Programme but an exception might be made for him. He conveyed the paramount importance of revealing the music's structural logic and the results were thrilling. Above all, he put the dignity back into Chopin playing. In going back to my favourite Rubinstein records it is gratifying to find them as good as I first thought. At that stage of his career he was re-recording a good deal of Chopin for RCA but the version of the Sonata in B minor is the only one he made. Having begun it in 1959 he didn't complete it until two years later, so one presumes it must have engaged him in a special way. Without doubt it is one of his finest studio achievements. The movements are realized with vibrant strength, intensity and expressiveness, and considerable risks are taken in the first and last. Yet it's his brilliant conception and unfolding of each of the four – enabling detail to fall unhurriedly into place - that impresses most. There is edge, excitement and plenty of the Rubinstein temperament but no superfluous agitation, and in the opening Allegro maestoso, a movement which can often sound as if it's in two minds, the inevitability of events is a particular glory. In June 1962, when the LP appeared, I felt it made an irresistible case for readmitting Chopin to the canon as a sonata writer and crediting him with a renewal of its dramatic force. I predicted, too, that this would be a great recording of the century: I am happy to stand by that!

Rubinstein made whatever he played his own, as artists must, but he was without mannerism in his phrasing. That was something that perhaps set him apart in his generation. When he played Chopin there was never any doubt of his seriousness and total engagement and his stance seemed just right. He was an aristocrat, and his beautifully vocal phrasing gave the impression of letting melody rise and fall under its own power. Although it is not easy to choose, I would nominate Rubinstein's recording of all the Mazurkas as his principal monument. In fact he recorded them twice. Some claim the earlier, pre-war version has a more improvisational charm, a wilder elan, a more profound melancholy and greater variety of expression, but that is a nice theological point. The later set, which appeared on three LPs in 1967, is the one I got to know and no one could deny that all of the 51 pieces, which are intricate in their variety of moods, come fully to life. Chopin responded strongly to the vital peasant music - national but with regional variants - which the mazurka represents, and they run through his career like a diary; if Rubinstein's serious approach lends the music more weight than usual, so be it. He points up their contrasts, one from another, and he makes an event of each piece. To listen to him in a sequence of (say) six or seven of the later ones is one of the acutest pleasures the discography of Chopin can provide.

Maurizio Pollini and Vladimir Ashkenazy

It is hard to believe that Rubinstein was nearing 80 when he completed the re-recording of the Mazurkas. His Indian summer continued with little diminishment of his powers and he was still inspirational to younger generations. By then, Maurizio Pollini and Vladimir Ashkenazy, 50 years his junior, had established their careers with Chopin, Ashkenazy with a Second Prize at the Warsaw International Chopin Competition in 1955 and Pollini (when he was 18) with the First Prize there in 1960. Pollini in that same year recorded the E minor Concerto (No 1) with the Philharmonia and Paul Kletzki. Their account has become a classic. It might seem strange to comment on the excellence of the orchestral playing and conducting - the Chopin concertos are not considered to need more than a lick and a promise from those departments - but the performance is more than a parade of fine piano playing and that is a strength. It is all of a piece, with the scale and articulation of the structure attended to and the long-range movement of harmony given motivation as well as the placing of detail. Serious stuff, yet with lots of room for the joyous, the ardent and the delectable - and with very good sound all round. 

It was in 1960, again, that Vladimir Ashkenazy completed his first recording of the Etudes. As DJF commented, it is difficult to resist drawing parallels with the young Evgeni Kissin 30 years later: once-in-a-generation virtuosos, both of them, with a musical maturity that always makes their fingers say something. Ashkenazy went on to record an integrale of Chopin but he never surpassed these early Etudes. An essential aspect of Chopin's poetics of the piano lies in his exploration of the resources of the instrument and the potentialities of timbre to be exploited by a new keyboard technique. The Etudes (and the Preludes) exemplify this and Ashkenazy delights because his prowess serves Chopin's inspiration, which took off creatively from an understanding of technical problems.

Sviatoslav Richter

By the summer of 1977 studio recordings by Sviatoslav Richter were rare events. The Four Scherzos were a joint production by Melodiya and RCA Victor Japan. The recording shows Richter at the height of his powers. I never heard him play Chopin better than here. The impression is of an artist passing through the studio and setting down a performance. A current of communicativeness and illumination shows through. He is on top form, taking risks other artists would rarely dare to in the studio, but the great joy derives from what I can only describe as a dialectic of tumult and order. There is none of the feverishness from which the Scherzos so often suffer but rather a refining fire, with virtuosity at the service of line, colour, character and continuity. The performances glow and blaze but what emerges is the great strength of these pieces, in which Chopin's balance of the ardent and the mercurial, the masculine and feminine, the fundamental and the ornamental, is perfectly understood and projected.

Richter does not, I stress, give you a guided tour of the intellectual beauties of the Scherzos, which could never be satisfying, yet in pieces which demand the most polished virtuosity to bring them alive the business of piano playing has rarely seemed less noticeable. He did indeed have a way of making most other players sound trite or clumsy. This recording shows the supreme musicality of his technique and a pretty good range of the colour and beauty of sonority one heard from him in the concert hall. I have a special affection for the Fourth Scherzo here, which is different from the others in its expansiveness and moods of quiet and often playful contentment.

Martha Argerich (and Mstislav Rostropovich)

In the music from the end of Chopin's life we sense a luminosity that seems to take the handful of great pieces on to a new plane. Horizons have changed, we emerge on to higher ground and the air is different. To judge from the small amount of work he sent out into the world in these last years, Chopin found composition more and more difficult but all of it strikes us as just that bit more special and more ambitious. I trust it will not seem perverse to represent Martha Argerich in my collection of ten pianists, not on her own, but as partner to Rostropovich in the Cello Sonata. What a combination of temperaments! Impulsive in spirit, generous in response to the emotional charge of this music, but they are precise and absolutely focused in their presentation of it. They make an inarguable case for Chopin as a master of order on a large scale as well as a small, and an inventor of new forms for new ideas all his days.

Alfred Cortot

As a callow youth who didn't warm to Chopin particularly I was taken one Sunday afternoon to the Guildhall, Portsmouth to hear Alfred Cortot. It was 1952, he played the 24 Preludes and all the Eludes, and it blew my mind. I had never heard such sound from the piano and such vividness of musical character, nor anyone play so fast.

Coming to him after players of our day, his searing oratory, his passion, are startling indeed. The richness of gesture and of sound seem almost too much. All his Chopin has the air of transcending considerations of the instrument. 'The pianist's hand on the keyboard is like the violinist's bow on the strings,' he used to say. He was a many-sided artist but his most compelling effects always emanate from simplicity, which allowed his playing to sound free and uncontrived. 

Today's players who continue to find inspiration in Cortot's example will tell you that it was not just his sound in general that was so remarkable, but the precision with which he used it to command character. The Etudes - both books, in his London recording of the 1930s - are essentials for my list; also the Preludes, from the same period, which are conveniently available on a single CD with the Berceuse, the Barcarolle and the lmpromptus.

Dinu Lipatti

Cortot said of his erstwhile pupil that he was 'perfection'. Characteristic of both of them was the way the tenderest lyricism never lost a virile quality, however quietly they played. From a short life, Lipatti's Chopin recordings have become classics, his studio recordings of the Barcarolle, the B minor Sonata and the 14 Waltzes (which he played in a nonchronological order of his own) in particular. The Waltzes are merciless in showing up the limitations of an interpreter's personality, and not just in the rhythm department. Not a few good players keep your attention for a while and then become predictable, or forget that virtuosity needs always to serve the exuberance of the dance. In this repertoire there can be few players who haven't felt inspired by Lipatti's example. 'No caprices, and a perfect tempo rubato! ' Toscanini said of him. He was a supremely gifted pianist of phenomenal insight and sensibility who was also a relentless perfectionist. 

Solomon

I include him not because, as an outstanding English pianist, he has been held in special veneration and affection, but because (like Lipatti) he had a flawless technique and was a tireless seeker. He was the least vain of players and instantly recognizable for his integrity and the great beauty of his sound. His A flat Waltz, Op 42, yields nothing to Lipatti's (or Cortot's) in its vivacity and allure, but I am wrong to call it 'his'- he is not 'making something of it', only concerned to serve it, and at the end you feel the music has liked Solomon, rather than the other way round. Testament has a CD of all his Chopin recordings which include the Fourth Ballade, the Fantasie in F minor and a Berceuse - five minutes of music shaped and generated only by texture and sonority, as someone nicely described it - which is about as good as it gets.

Murray Perahia and Maria João Pires

Today, when I listen to Perahia in the Ballades, or Pires in the Nocturnes and the Preludes, I find it impossible to agree that players of distinction are less individual in Chopin than their predecessors (though that may be more generally true), or that spontaneity has been sacrificed in order to satisfy the modern industry's insistence on a product of high technical finish (which again is sometimes true). Perahia in the Ballades is successful in unfolding them with a quite special improvisational rhetoric, every paragraph a stream of poetically charged events, and the vividness is as striking as his finesse.

I wonder if Chopin would have liked making CDs! I feel pretty sure he would have approved of Pires in the Nocturnes. Let me try to annotate her playing of one of the greatest ones, the C minor, Op 48 No 1 - perhaps the most imposing and dramatic of the entire series. It requires perfect control of sound, scale and timing and a range of expression which can encompass the lament at the start - rolling on and on and developing into a huge lyric paragraph, like something in Bach or a slow movement of Mozart - and the increasingly grand procession of statements which follows it (the C major middle section) . And more: after that the lament returns, changed by what has come in between, and in one of those endings characteristic of Chopin we sense a sort of apotheosis. What an inspiration this sombre masterpiece is, and how difficult for the pianist to hold a line and make everything belong and to convey, here at the close, a sense of strength in adversity.

Clear away the sentimentality and the pathos, as Pires does, and Chopin appears in simple dignity, as Thomas Carlyle saw him in London in 1848: a great artist and, in Carlyle's words, 'a noble and much suffering human being'. Perhaps he was an 'artist' in that word's most absolute sense more than any musician of his time. He was dedicated to the task of exploring the world he knew best, and as Debussy said: 'Chopin is the greatest of them all, for through the piano alone he discovered everything.'

He remains a touchstone for recognizing whether the performer is a poet or merely a pianist.

This article originally appeared in the June 1999 issue of Gramophone.

FUENTE: The 10 greatest chopin pianists, Stephen Plaistow Mon 26th September 2016