Recording quality is rather dry and boxy on this new Centaur issue and in quiet passages there is a pronounced hum. But these are not such crippling disadvantages as the extremely over-resonant acoustic in which Hyperion place Angela Brownridge's rather ordinary performance of the Barber Sonata, and in fact Willis Delony has a good grasp of the shape and direction of Barber's ideas.
His Prokofiev is similarly articulate and intelligent, and although he doesn't throw down the gauntlet in the virtuoso manner there is nothing in his interpretation with which I would seriously take issue. In this he brings to mind the level-headed approach of Murray McLachlan on Olympia/Target. What neither Delony, nor McLachlan, nor indeed Stephen Hough on ASV can do is to come anywhere near the inspiration and depth of insight of Kissin's live Tokyo performance on Sony Classical (which surpasses even the superb Pogorelich on DG). Nor can Delony rival the fantasy and fireworks of Van Cliburn in the Barber, recently transferred to CD by RCA, with Mozart's C major Sonata, K330 and six short Debussy pieces for couplings (to be reviewed later). David Allen Wehr's fine account of the Barber is also worth hearing, coupled with an uncommonly interesting American programme and richly (not over-richly) recorded by Chandos.'