Frederic Chopin(1810-1849)
       Preludes, Opus 28

Garrick Ohlsson
Arabesque 6629
Recorded 1989

Garrick Ohlsson recently accomplished for Arabesque the complete piano
music of Frederic Chopin.  That fact alone has significantly raised
the public's awareness of Ohlsson.  Of course, simply traversing the
entire category of a composer's music does not bestow excellence on the
performances.  I'm thinking at the moment of Lelie Howard who covered
all of Liszt's piano music for Hyperion; although Howard has been widely
congratulated for taking on such a large endeavor, reviews of the
recordings were mixed at best.

This is the first Ohlsson solo piano disc of Chopin's music that I am
reviewing; most of the others will be reviewed at future dates.  I don't
have any particular expectations and have found other Ohlsson discs
rewarding without being essential.

Before sharing my views of Ohlsson's readings of Chopin's Preludes, I
have two administrative notices.  One is that the disc does not provide
a track-by-track listing of each prelude; that seems rather discourteous
of the buyer.  Second, Ohlsson includes two versions of the 14th Prelude
in E flat minor on the basis that a second version was appended to the
official set of the Preludes.  Seeing that the second version is a Largo,
its inclusion is quite interesting.  The liner notes state that the Largo
has never before been recorded, but I can't substantiate or refute that
claim.

As it happens, the second version of the 14th Prelude is the highlight
of Ohlsson's performances.  After a couple of listenings, my first draft
of the review was strongly negative.  However, additional hearings have
warmed me a little toward Ohlsson's readings.  He definitely can sparkle,
be loving/tender, and deliver the despair and power of the applicable
preludes.  But many other recorded pianists do it better than Ohlsson
and also largely stay clear of annoying habits.

There are a few Ohlsson stylistic tendencies which I find annoying.
First, he has the habit of banging out lower register chords to the point
where it becomes unatttractive and overwhelms the other voices.  Second,
his very slow tempos in some of the preludes leads to slackness.  Third,
he can be stingy with nuance and inflection.  Fourth, some melody line
notes get shortened which tends to damage the music's flow and beauty.
Fifth, Ohlsson flattens the double-dotted rhtyhm in the 9th Prelude;
I'll never understand why anyone would do that and reduce the ceremonial
nature of the piece.

Through it all, I still enjoy the performances because Ohlsson has the
basic pulse of Chopin's soundworld.  It's just that little of what I
hear is memorable, although two very good memories do surface.  His 24th
Prelude has a strong bass-line and fine tension which leads me to think
that he would be a good match for Scriabin.  The other good memory is
of the Largo version of the 14th Prelude; it is a killer version where
one can easily hear how every note fits into the total package.  Ohlsson
plays it like a storm-trooper and also gives an x-ray examination of the
architecture.

Don's Conclusions: The Ohlsson version of Chopin's Preludes is a fine
one which ultimately does not attain any special status excepting for
the inclusion of the Largo version of the 14th Prelude.  His tempos are
not mainstream, but all else is in the middle of the pack.

On the horizon are reviews of the 1940's Cortot performance on the Italian
label "Aura" and the Rubinstein version on RCA.  At the moment, I'm not
enthralled with Rubinstein's interpretations and am beginning to understand
why he didn't record the work as often as he did many other Chopin piano
works.

Don Satz
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