Chopin: Nocturne No. 16 in E flat major, Op. 55 No. 2 - download (MP3 & FLAC)

“you only have to listen to the Scherzo No 2 to realise she remains a supreme Chopin stylist, combining temperament with an unsentimental touch.” Financial Times, 19th May 2012 ****

“to an even greater extent than before, her performances blaze and challenge with a potent and highly individual sense of drama...For Fialkowska, Chopin can take on something of the dark-hued austerity of late Liszt...there is never any doubting her strength of purpose. All this is a striking advance on earlier recordings, with their earlier recordings, with their more conventional notion of interpretation, and to crown it all Fialkowska has been superbly recorded.” Gramophone Magazine, August 2012

“This is a rich and illuminating find. From the outset you sense Janina Fialkowska's innate, developmental grasp of drama - of the connection between phrases and their dynamic character. Then there's the sheer life in her playing, reflected in the perfectly nourished and shrewdly apportioned sound...her pacing and exceptional graps of musical narrative is a masterclass in the art of pianistic rhetoric.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2012 *****

“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

“Sudbin gets my vote right at the start here by opening his Chopin recital with the Fantasy in F minor, one of the pinnacles of the composer's art...Sudbin captures its improvisatory qualities and unexpected shifts of texture. It's a satisfying start to this disc by a thoughtful pianist. But he loses my vote in some of the Nocturnes and Mazurkas...He redeems himself with powerful, poetic performances of the Third and Fourth Ballades” BBC Music Magazine, December 2011 ***

“Sudbin is at his most convincing in those larger musical canvases, whose sense of theatricality, emotional range and formal complexities he projects very vividly; the haunted, dark-hued account of the Fantasy is particularly impressive. But the smaller pieces respond less well to Sudbin's treatment: it's not heavy-handed, but places extra expressive weight on pieces that need a much more refined and delicately coloured approach” The Guardian, 24th November 2011 ***

“This glorious disc confirms Yevgeny Sudbin as one of the most searching and inspired of today’s pianists...The playing is so beautiful, so full of life and so rich in imagination that all one really wants to do is sit back and listen to it over and over again without necessarily analysing what it is that makes it feel so “right” and so stimulating...This is a disc not to be missed. It is a triumph.” The Telegraph, 26th November 2011 *****

“richly coloured and deftly articulated...Along the way there are some lovely individual touches like the way Lortie varies the dynamic in the exposition repeat of the First Scherzo...This is Chopin playing of a superior order.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2010

“Lortie’s recital-like organisation of the repertoire is particularly appealing...Nothing is overstated dramatically here, which is not to say that the individual character of the pieces is not identified and communicated with taste and a clear expressive intent.” The Telegraph, 1st June 2010 ***

“Lortie's musicianship is imaginative but never eccentric, with a technique that is always at the service of the music.” BBC Music Magazine, July 2010 ****

“It's all tremendously fluent, the technical hurdles easily cleared...Lortie gets the final peroration of the B flat minor Scherzo exactly right – a tremendous performance – and is pretty persuasive throughout the sonata, too” The Guardian, 1st July 2010 ***