Though no less than 16 different versions of the Funeral March Sonata are currently on sale, this is the first to emerge on CD. The Meridian tone is vivid and resonant, more true to life than on the cassette, which readers should note is the only other form in which this Chopin selection is being issued. Everything undertaken by Bingham for this composer is plainly a labour of love. But his highly romantic response to detail sometimes results in self-indulgent, almost improvisational-sounding liberties not in the best interests of the music's larger design. In the sonata's first movement, for instance, there is a wholly disproportionate slowing down (Chopin's only marking is sostenuto) when the first subject cedes to the second. An unrequested tempo change at the start of the development similarly draws too much attention to itself before mounting passion is allowed its natural flow. And a natural flow is the very last thing Bingham allows the second movement's lyrical Trio, though the main Scherzo sections are well controlled within a moderate rather than demonic tempo. The Funeral March moves at a sensible speed to which mourners could comfortably march: he plays it with bold dynamic contrasts and more strongly marked (perhaps too strongly) sforzandos than most of his rivals. But rubato, and resort to the old-style habit of playing one hand after the other, slightly sentimentalize the Trio. The finale is suitably eerie without idio-syncrasies of any kind.
Starting his second side's best-sellers with the Andante spianato and grande polonaise, Bingham comes up with some fantastically light, glistening fingerwork in the Polonaise, though I wondered if some of its contrasting episodes were disproportionately robust, just as in the C sharp minor Etude odd notes and accents are a bit too spiky for their context. Most of all I enjoyed the deeply affectionate yet unmannered flow of the opening and closing sections of the E major Etude, also the nicely curved line and delicate embellishment in the D flat Nocturne.'