Chopin - Piano Music [Ashkenazy] This is a nicely chosen recital, concentrating on the later works in Chopin's life, in the 5 years from 1842-1847, and half his works from Op52-64, it's also a good mix and variety of different works, though not in chronological order, this is not a re-issue of Ashkenazy's older recordings, but these were all recorded fresh for this disc in 1999, such a disc forced me to listen to some Chopin that is not among my favourite works, mainly the Waltz's and Mazurkas, but this was a good thing.
Vladimir Ashkenazy has now appeared in my Blog 12 times, a regular visitor to my column, born in Russia, he's now 73 years old, the front cover photograph [by Sasha Gusov], is a black and white shot, with gold colouring, a nice closely cropped shot of Ashkenazy resting his chin on has hand, i like the way that the top of his head is cropped out, it's a nicely balanced shot, and the lettering is pleasing.
I liked tracks 1-2, 4-5 & 12 the most, it's the longer works on the disc that i like the best, it's really only Etudes as real miniatures that i feel Chopin was truly superb with, other than them it's the slightly bigger canvas that i feel Chopin's ideas work on better, on this recording it's the opening piece that is the best of all, his last Ballade, the opening has the sound of ringing bells [0:00-0:09], and Ashkenazy's piano has a lovely timbre to it, after an initial introduction, Chopin's main tune is gently played [0:38+], sounding very much like one of his Nocturnes, it gradually grows in intensity, and ebbs and flows in waves of dramatic power [2:40+ & 3:14+ for instance], there's variations galore on the opening tune, with some dramatic embellishments at times [7:40-8:18], consisting of lots of runs of notes, the secondary theme reaches a lovely climax at [8:45] in a terrific outburst, a surprising lull of five impassioned notes [9:35-9:51], heralds the onslaught of the finale, to me it all sounds like a Fantasy rather than a Ballade, but it seems to encapsulate everything.
Here's Vladimir Ashkenazy playing the Fourth Ballade on YouTube.
