Instead of coupling Chopin's B minor Sonata with its predecessor in B flat minor, like the majority of her rivals in the catalogue, Leonskaja follows it and the F minor Fantasia with a sonata and a previously unrecorded (on CD) B minor Fantaisie by Scriabin to make up a generous total of 66 minutes. The recording itself is bright and clear, but there is a touch of steel or should I say hardness?—in the sound not encountered in the mellower comparative versions listed above.
She herself brings very positive, masculine strength to Chopin, as the sonata's opening Allegro maestoso at once makes clear. If not quite as affirmative as Pollini (DG), she is closer to him here than the more impressionable Uchida (Philips), Perahia (CBS) and Ashkenazy (Decca). Though the faster sections of the Scherzo emerge just a little too clinical, the lyrical Trio comes with the maximum contrast thanks to her slower and more flexible tempo. Her timing of 10'05'' for the Largo is slower than any of her rivals, even Perahia (9'54''). This movement is finely controlled though I wondered if the central E major sostenuto needed a little more flow. The finale has an impulsive exuberance all her own. Yet this music only reveals its full cumulative excitement when held on a tauter rhythmic rein than hers.
For me it is still the introspectively searching Ashkenazy who comes closest to the innermost poetry of this work. I also think that on the same disc he makes the F minor Fantasia, with his extra one-and-a-quarter minutes, just that much more his own, not least in the Grave introduction and central Lento. But Leonskaja's account (apart from some prematurely hasty triplets in the transition from the introduction to the first big A flat major theme) commands great respect for its no-nonsense directness of expression.
In Scriabin's second 'Sonata-Fantasy', Op. 19, I preferred her slower tempo and steadier flow in the opening Andante to Davidovich's more capricious phrasing (Philips): from her there is rather more suggestion of that 'water in the moonlight' we're told Scriabin was trying to depict. I also admired the richness of the melodic line she always picks out from elaborate surrounding figuration—in the second movement too. And the melancholy brooding of the slightly later B minor Fantaisie is well sustained, even if she goes out to meet earlier climaxes a little too generously instead of holding maximum might in reserve for the exultant homecoming.'