As hard as it is to believe, I seem to have this CD before Don Satz (well, it was on sale:) My first impressions are very good: Ashkenazy's version seems to have cured all the things I don't like in Nikolaeva's Hyperion recording. First of all, the sound is much better; it is in fact close to perfect as solo piano recordings go (Decca has a good track record for excellent piano sound, at least in recordings made in the last few years). The sound has great clarity and just the right amount of resonance for a realistic "living-room" size hall, there is plenty of dynamic range from ppp to fff without any deterioration in clarity and detail (by contrast, I can only listen to Nikolaeva's version at low volumes, at high volumes it starts to "ring" in my ears). In interpretation, Ashkenazy sounds like he has thought long and deep about these works; this is no casual read-through by a virtuoso. Not that the virtuoso element is missing: his control and total ease in fast passages beats Nikolaeva (who sometimes sounds like she is barely keeping up with the metronome). I am pleasantly surprised at the clarity of his lines in the fugues; again helped by the clear recording, it is much easier to follow the fugues (and the counterpoint in general) with Ashkenazy than with Nikolaeva (why wasn't he this good with the fugal finale in his Hammerklavier recording? but of course that's in a lot worse sound than here). Overall there is a lot of detail which Askenazy brings out that's obscured in the Nikolaeva. In addition, I like his choices of tempo a lot better too (compare the timings: Ashkenazy 142 mins, Nikolaeva 166 mins). Nikolaeva has a tendency to slow down to a crawl in the slower preludes, and not pushing fast enough in some of the fast ones. She is also rythmically not as precise. Ashkenazy removes the slack and as a result the improvisatory, "day-dreaming" quality of some of the slow pieces is not as prominent; instead we get a tight, well-thought-out musical argument; the balance between intellectual and emotional content is restored to a Bach-like level, as it should be. So am I throwing away my Nikolaeva set? I might well do so, although only more time will tell. Ulvi Yurtsever E-mail: [log in to unmask]