Rosen's strong-toned, firmly underpinned, essentially masculine readings are in a world apart from the self-indulgently elasticated Chopin often heard from the younger generation. In the B flat minor Sonata, however, this musicologically-minded player remains very much his 'own man'. For instance, his repeat of the first movement's exposition embraces the introductory call-to-attention instead of starting at the doppio movimento in bar five—as preferred by every other pianist ever to come my way on record, except Mitsuko Uchida. Despite the Warsaw manuscript cited in justification, I still find it hard to believe that Chopin really intended such a non sequitur. In the agitated first subject I would also question such scrupulous observance of the score's pedal marks: on a modern instrument texture too easily sounds clotted even at Rosen's unusually deliberate tempo. I was again surprised at his deliberation in the demonic Scherzo—until reading in his own booklet notes that he envisages this movement as ''a Mazurka as heroic as the great Polonaises''. Just as he is slower here than his three formidable rivals listed above, so his Funeral March is considerably faster than theirs, with much emphasis of its sharp dynamic contrasts. Nor does he permit any vestige of subjective sentiment to disrupt the Trio's steady flow. In the finale he dispenses with the right pedal along with all hazy notions of ''wind swirling over graves''. His despatch of it with such clarity and control in a minute and a half is an undeniable tour de force, even if such incisive fingerwork is less than ideally attuned to its ghostly sotto voce. I'm bound to add that Ashkenazy (Decca), Pollini (DG) and Perahia (CBS) remain my first recommendations in this sonata, and especially the highly-strung Ashkenazy, who reminds us more disturbingly than anyone that Chopin himself had so very recently looked death in the face.
In the Polonaise-fantaisie and the Barcarolle, both so often allowed to meander, there is much to admire in Rosen's strong sense of direction, though in the latter, in particular, I wished he had given just a little more thought to matters of tonal refinement and sheer sensuous beauty. Without resorting to ''Polish Arrythmia'' (as Paderewski once described it) I also thought he could have allowed the two Ballades a slightly more malleable lyrical flow. Could it be that searching intellectual analysis of this music has ever so slightly blunted his sense of wonder? The recorded sound is not without a trace of steel above a certain dynamic level.'