Chopin: Nocturnes, Barcarolle, Fantaisie

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The Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau, was at home with these mostly quiet, reflective pieces. Sir Neville Cardus of the Guardian described Arrau vividly: “Arrau is the complete pianist. He can revel in the keyboard for it’s own pianistic sake, representing to us the instruments range and power, but he can also go beyond piano playing as we are led by his art to the secret chambers of the creative imagination.

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Claudio Arrau’s Chopin Nocturnes have had several CD incarnations, including an attractively priced two-for-one Philips duo that includes the Impromptus. While they may cost more reissued in Philips’s 50 Great Recordings series, the works gain sonic heft and dimension via these new 24-bit transfers, with more warmth in the higher frequencies. Arrau considered the Nocturnes among Chopin’s most searching, emotionally penetrating works.

Consequently, the pianist aims to read between the music’s sentiments through ample rubatos, unorthodox accentuation, and inner drama. The results radically differ from Arthur Rubinstein’s benign lyricism, much as Maria Callas’s truth-or-dare approach to Bellini contrasted with Joan Sutherland’s suave agility. Ornamental passages, for instance, are painstakingly spelled out and shaped in the form of rapid melodies, as in the Op. 55 No. 2 Nocturne’s climactic chain of trills and the F-sharp Nocturne’s middle-register accompanimental figures. In general, Arrau’s grand solidity works best with the darker, more texturally elaborate selections. If the pianist’s brooding, worried journey through the Barcarolle causes the music’s sublime polyphony to sink upstream, the F Minor Fantasy radiates drive and heroism at every turn in one of Arrau’s most inspired recordings. –Jed Distler