Placing all my cards on the table I would claim that there have been few Chopin recordings of this stature. Here surely is a culmination of Benjamin Grosvenor's journey from prodigy(confirmed on his early recording entitled 'this and that') to an artist of formidable calibre. Like Artur Rubinstein before him, he possesses a rare capacity to maintain long 'vocal' lines while remaining ever sensitive to rhythmic and harmonic piquancy. I would also add that rarely has Chopin been lifted so decisively out of the salon, an environment for too long associated with his name, into heroism on the grandest scale.
In the Berceuse with its 'rain of silvery fire' there is a subtle lift to the phrases, the approach gentle and unassuming yet casting a potent spell. A reminder, too, that the Berceuse remains among Chopin's most deceptive works and a challenge met successfully by very few pianists. And while I would never want to be without celebrated recordings by Cortot(for Daniel Barenboim he 'discovered the opium in Chopin') or Murray Perahia's patrician poise, Grosvenor, with his unfaltering stylistic assurance is of a no less distinguished standing.
From calm and a sustained ecstasy to the elemental storms of the B flat minor Sonata is a wide step but, again, Grosvenor, even with legendary recordings available by pianists as celebrated as Cortot, Gilels and the eccentric if mesmeric Samson Francois, gives a performance of an overwhelming mastery, the opening 'Grave-Doppio movimento's contrasting violence and repose, lyricism and rhetoric captured to a rare degree. The second movement 'Scherzo' emerges in a powerhouse of bravura(Chopin's ' Mephisto Scherzo' if you like) and what dignity he achieves in the Funeral March. As for the finale which so shocked Chopin's contemporaries, Grosvenor's furious gusts of sound(like others before him he hardly takes the composer's prescribed 'sotto voce' at face value) astonishes and bemuses. Few pianists have mastered Chopin's' most powerful and malignant masterpiece to this degree, reminding you that several artists have fought shy of such scale and savagery. Peter Katin once confessed to me that he became so engulfed in its darkness that he ceased further performances for some years, while Stephen Kovacevich after many attempts felt unequal to the task, asking where and what is the sonority demanded by the finale's malevolence.
The Third Sonata's tireless expansion and floridity is at the opposite extreme to the Second Sonata's compression. Grosvenor is grandly assertive in the opening 'Allegro maestoso,' delectably light-fingered(though never to a superficial degree) in the Scherzo, deeply expressive in the 'Largo' and victorious in what has so aptly been described as 'that great and equestrian finale.'
For sizeable encores there are the G minor Ballade in a performance of an eloquence that makes you long for its successors, and the opus 55 Nocturnes. In the first in F minor Grosvenor's 'rubato is as natural as breathing, an effortless give and take beneath the overall pulse and line. He captures all of the E flat major Nocturnes harmonically audacious, quick-silver magic(a prophecy of Faure's fluidity) and, crowned by Decca's superb sound I can only end by saying that Grosvenor is born for Chopin; and for so much else.
Bryce Morrison