Another splendid digital remastering, with tone even fuller, richer and more immediate than before. For Pogorelich fanciers, anxious to pursue this outstanding young Jugoslav from cradle to grave, it is of course an obligatory purchase. But for serious Chopin collectors, and notably as regards the B flar minor Sonata, there are certain vagaries that could prove hard to live with—notably Pogorelich's disruptively different tempos for the opening movement's first and second subjects, and again in the development section's initial conflict between (as it were) Orpheus and the Furies. Omission of repeats, questionable enough in th Trio of the Scherzo, are still more regrettable in the Elysian Trio of the Marche funebre, the main section of which is taken more briskly than by nearly everyone except DG's Argerich on LP.
Second to none in sheer keyboard brilliance, Pogorelich is a winner in the Etudes. But, as I remarked when this recital first appeared in 1981, he is somewhat self-indugent in the time taken over the reposeful sections of the C sharp minor Scherzo, and in the same way perhaps sacrifices a little too much of the natural melodic flow of the E flat Nocturne, and even the C sharp minor Prelude—beautiful as they are in his own way. Needless to say, everything he does is always done with princely authority. Yet as with John Bingham, who so recently emerged as the CD catalogue's first Op. 35 contender (Meridian EDC84070, 3/85), my advice would be to wait a little longer for further choice in the Sonata before taking so pricy a plunge.'