Lots of pianists seem to be recording Szymanowski at the moment, but Mikhail Rudy has his own way with this music. It is symbolized, perhaps, by the ordering of his programme, which is chronological save for the fact that the Etudes, Op. 33 are placed before the Op. 29 Metopes. The Etudes are intended as a linked set, and in a performance as vividly characterized as this, one which recognizes how Szymanowski has often placed individual numbers to strike sparks from each other, the result is a good deal bigger than the sum of its parts.
‘Big’ and ‘strong’ are words that spring to mind quite often during these readings; not perhaps the first adjectives one would choose to describe Szymanowski, yet they seem highly appropriate here. What do the Metopes have in common? They are portraits of women (the Sirens, Calypso, Nausicaa) all of whom at least threaten to be too strong for Odysseus. “Isle of the Sirens” is a big piece, for all its florid voluptuousness; there is firm strength as well as impressionist colour to the portrait of Calypso; Szymanowski’s Nausicaa is an exotic enchantress as well as a seductive one. The Masques, of course, respond still more to strong and purposeful virtuosity, and Rudy brings richness of colour as well as bold pianism to “Sheherazade”, while in “Tantris le bouffon” he somehow suggests the humiliation of Tristan, in this version of the legend forced to disguise himself as a jester to gain access to Isolde; there is even something of frustration or of desperation beneath the ardour of his “Serenade de Don Juan”.
After all this, the Mazurkas come as a surely deliberate shock: a distilled, pared-down music after all that richness and colour and, in the late Mazurka, Op. 62 No. 1, an outpouring of the purest lyricism. I have enjoyed this collection enormously, not least the ample acoustic which matches the scale of the performances so well. If I wanted to convert someone to Szymanowski’s piano music, I think I should start with this disc.'