American-born but Paris-based Frederic Chiu goes from strength to strength. Last year he gave us brilliantly conceived and executed Decaux, Ravel and Schoenberg (1/96). Now, he argues his case for combining Chopin’s Op. 10 Etudes and Rondos in performances of exemplary imaginative scope and in accompanying notes sufficiently acute to deserve separate publication. Immediately, in Op. 10 No. 1, his playing is sufficiently varied in light and shade to re-create a tone-poem (Chopin’s “runaway chorale”) rather than a mere study and, throughout, sense and sensibility combine in ideal proportion. In Op. 10 No. 4 he leaps into the fray with dazzling articulacy and assurance and in Op. 10 No. 6 – one of the slow etudes mistakenly conceived by competition organizers and the like as a soft option – his interpretation is as lucid as it is hauntingly disconsolate. Op. 10 No. 8, too, is gloriously free from all pedagogical strain or consideration and it is no exaggeration to say that Chiu’s performance is among the most fleet and coruscating on record. In Op. 10 No. 10 there is a witty differentiation between Chopin’s phrase and accent marks: Chiu’s mischievous, hiccuping start may surprise, but it is what Chopin wrote. The broad serenade-like sweeps of No. 11 are taken at the composer’s prescribed Allegretto and in No. 12 there is a true evocation of Chopin’s heroic defiance.
The E flat Rondo (a piece Horowitz made peculiarly his own, Sony Classical, 7/94) provides a dazzling curtain-raiser and if the Rondo a la Mazur’s elegant patterning is over-protracted and Op. 1 an amusingly gauche, Hummelian affair (Chopin was 15 when he wrote it) that is hardly the pianist’s fault. The Op. 73 Rondo is given in both its solo and two-piano versions (Chiu takes both parts in the latter), and again, the performances quiver with pianistic panache and glitter.
Naturally, everyone will cherish their beloved Cortot and early Ashkenazy recordings of the Etudes but I do beg you to consider this exceptional disc, finely recorded and lavishly presented (including a photograph of the opening page autograph of the E major Etude). More Chopin (the Op. 25 and Trois Nouvelles Etudes for a start) would be more than welcome from this outstandingly gifted pianist.'