Here is a well-planned Chopin recital, wonderfully recorded in a suitably resonant acoustic, and full of warmth, expressive character and sheer artistry. Jon Nakamatsu was the Gold Medal winner at the tenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (Harmonia Mundi’s selection from his winning performances was warmly praised by BM, 3/98), and his playing goes way beyond mere designer expertise and craftsmanship.
In the Impromptus, his pliable phrasing and subtle rubato breathe life into the music, as does his feeling for texture and contrapuntal voicing. The G flat Impromptu (track 3), for example, seems to me to strike a perfect balance between romantic expression and colouring and a resilience and firmness of line. So too does the Fantaisie-impromptu, which after a gentle opening increases in urgency and poetry. I love the way he switches attention from the tenor to treble register, as if moving from chest to head voice (track 4 from 0'21''); and his caressing of the middle section is magical too, with a gloriously luminous singing tone. The Fantasia on Polish Airs, given a rare outing, is performed with absolute conviction: Nakamatsu revels in the gentle right-hand embellishments, and I particularly like his retreat to the loveliest pianissimo (track 5 from 8'20''), which exudes the most regal sense of repose. As one might expect, the filigree of the Berceuse is perfectly suited to his grasp of delicacy and nuance.
The three Mazurkas, Op. 59 – surely among the richest of Chopin’s Polish dances – are played with a fine feeling for idiomatic flavour; in the Polonaises Nakamatsu deliberately underplays certain characteristics in his apparent determination not to sound hackneyed. In the A flat Polonaise, for example, he avoids the awkward trap of cliched overfamiliarity by varying the dynamic profile with unexpected diminuendos, by increasing the expressive tension within a fairly broad tempo, through his awareness of texture and inner voices, and by employing an occasionally coy rubato. His playing is always interesting, always crystal-clear and beautiful, and while some may find the Polonaises a touch fussy, the attention to detailed interpretative gloss to some extent obstructing a sense of momentum, others will revel in the imaginative freshness.
But I really can’t see much scope for divided opinion: this is a delightful Chopin recital, one of rare refinement whose inner radiance and expressive subtlety continue steadily to reveal its secrets.'