Ashkenazy was 26 when this recital took place. The previous year he had shared first prize with John Ogdon at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. One would rather expect to hear a young lion of the keyboard laying claim to his territory, and in many ways this is what the playing turns out to be. The young Russian is simply bursting with physical energy and at almost every moment the music threatens to leap off the page.
I've never found Ashkenazy's early or middle Beethoven especially convincing. The E flat Sonata is not an attractive performance. Many of the fortes are inappropriately violent for the scale of the piece. Nevertheless, he is nothing if not spirited and the second subject of the opening Allegro is nicely phrased and perky. One only wishes he had given more thought as to how the music was put together.
Predictably, the Chopin works best. The big central climax of the G minor Ballade is as majestic and triumphant as ever you will hear it. The final climaxes of the F major have a tumultuous impact. However, questions of style surface in the Third, where one senses that Ashkenazy's Chopin could never have been a person welcomed into the salons of the Parisian aristocracy. He would have made the chandeliers rattle uncontrollably. The Fourth, after a rather tentative opening, falls to pieces as an interpretation, the pianist only dallying with the music and failing to find a convincing musical line.
I was interested to hear L'isle joyeuse portrayed so much with orchestral textures in mind. It may lack sweep, but the overtly detailed virtuosic approach reminds one of Stravinsky, and therefore makes challenging listening (the same with the ''Serenade interrompue''). A pity about ''Clair de lune''; it begins in a very mannered way and is extremely short on atmosphere. The recorded sound is surprisingly good for the vintage, though the instrument is too close.'