Chopin: Ballade No. 3 in A flat major, Op. 47

“The revelations stem from the admirable restraint of Planès's playing...The Nocturnes... combine elegance with profundity, while the selection from the Op 25 Etudes is exquisitely done.” The Guardian, 7th January 2010 ****

“…Planès himself works poetic magic, with wonderfully paced phrasing and a style of rubato replete with beautifully judged elasticity and grace; and he has explored Chopin's approach to improvised ornamentation to tasteful effect. There's not a meaningless note in the whole disc.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2010 *****

“Alain Planès...is obviously at home with the instrument, and plays finely. He also makes a gallant attempt at recapturing Chopin’s famously fluid style of playing. The A flat ballade is particularly pleasing.” Sunday Times, 28th February 2010 ****

“Taken from 78s, the restored sound captures Moiseiwitsch's wonderful light and shade, alchemical pedalling, searching poetry, and vast technique. The 24 Preludes are exceptional.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2008 *****

“In glorious tone quality, drama, visionary intensity and sheer poetry, few pianists have ever surpassed Cortot. This CD is a treat, if you don't mind wrong notes, and includes two totally different interpretations of the Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2.” BBC Music Magazine, Proms 2007 *****

“This fifth and final release of Cortot's 78rpm Chopin recordings is surely the jewel in the crown. Here, the 1929 rather than the more familiar 1933 set of the Ballades blazes with a passion, brilliance and poetic audacity that set the pulses racing and the mind reeling. Here is a great artist who seized the opportunity to achieve ever greater heights of eloquence and rhetorical verve. Superbly restored by Mark Obert-Thorn, every performance is charged with a heady and consuming poetry that confirms Daniel Barenboim's claim that 'Cortot discovered the opium in Chopin'. Take the First Ballade's opening, where Cortot is every inch the bardic poet, free, rhapsodic and inimitable; or hear him in the Presto con fuoco storms of the Second Ballade, where he plays as if pursued by the furies of hell.
Again, even when inaccuracies fly in all directions in the heat of the chase, no other pianist has approached the Third Ballade's central C sharp minor turbulence with such daring or recreative force. Cortot was never one to hold back in the interests of decorum and in the Fourth Ballade he stretches the parameters of Chopin's poetry to the very edge, his playing close to being consumed in its own ecstasy.
His selection of Nocturnes (sadly his projected Chopin survey was never completed) pulse with the same alluring quality, suggesting the reverse of Rubinstein's more patrician elegance. True, for today's more antiseptic and 'tasteful' practitioners such artistic conviction and originality will seem extravagant or even camp. Yet there is surely no living pianist who could or would attempt to emulate such heart-stopping poetry.
Maria Callas herself would have been among the first to pay tribute to Cortot's cantabile, an unequalled 'singing' at the piano.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“The great French pianist famous for…. His magical touch and lovely singing tone and a flexibility of phrasing and movement as natural as breathing.” Sunday Times