You need only a very few minutes to realize that Tzimon Barto intends to make every single note in his Chopin recital entirely his own. I've never heard the first of the Op. 28 Preludes emerging more like a Viennese waltz, or darker pieces like No. 2 in A minor, No. 4 in E minor, No. 20 in C minor, and most of all the brief No. 6 in B minor (here lasting 3'08'') taken more slowly, sufficiently wilting in their final bars to make you fear they will snuff out altogether before the end. The meditative No. 13 in F sharp major is similarly protracted. In many different contexts there are idiosyncratic details of timing, shading and accentuation that might grow to sound mannered, in other words that might begin to draw too much attention to themselves, after repeated hearings. But there are many poetic things to be found too. I particularly enjoyed his aerial grace and charm in rippling major key preludes like No. 3 in G, and most of all in Nos. 19 in E flat and 23 in F. The longer Nos. 15 in D flat and 17 in A flat are also pleasing because they are rather more left to speak for themselves. The group of Nocturnes and smaller pieces at the end bring more reminders of Barto's basic finesse and sensibility as a Chopin player, likewise his ability to create a truly pellucid, Chopinesque sound-world. Nevertheless his predilection for excessively slow tempo again sorely tries one's patience. The Mikuli edition of the popular E flat Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 2, for instance, suggests a metronome marking of a quaver=132 to meet its Andante marking; Barto, characteristically opts for a quaver=74, nearly destroying the natural melodic flow.
In the clarity of his EMI engineering, Barto is luckier than the Russian, Dina Joffe, recorded at the Moscow Conservatoire where she once studied. While warm, her piano sounds too close and plummy, and in this reverberant venue she surely uses too much pedal for textural clarity in more vehement outbursts like Nos. 8 in F sharp minor, 12 in G sharp minor and 16 in B flat minor. In these her playing more than once loses an essential element of elegance and tonal refinement. In Nos. 18 in F minor and 22 in G minor I even wondered if she was trying to evoke a belligerent George Sand locked with Chopin in some domestic tiff. Though never quite as funereal as Barto in slower pieces, she, too, allows herself a great deal of time to make every note speak. While of course preferring her overtly romantic pursuit of expression to cold-heartedness (and when rationing her rubato, her phrasing can be eloquently expressive), I'm afraid I cannot recommend this shortish disc any more than I can Barto's as a full-price alternative to the catalogue's many more subtle stylists (not forgetting names like Rubinstein, Cortot, Pollini and Ashkenazy) in this music.'