Ashkenazy's pianistic return to Tchaikovsky, the composer most closely associated with his early triumph but for so long rejected by him, is a patchy success. There is a warmth to the playing that has often been missing from recent Ashkenazy recordings, although there is still the distinctive brittle edge (or extreme brightness, to put it more kindly) that characterizes his tone.
Before the main business of The Seasons is a sequence of rarely heard miniatures. Ashkenazy produces a gentle colouring in 'Meditation' and the 'Berceuse' (both from a collection of Morceaux, Op. 72), although in Aveu passione - largely a transcription of an episode from the symphonic ballad Voyevoda, which was originally conceived as the love scene for a rejected opera of that name - the melodic line could be more vocally shaped and projected. In The Seasons Ashkenazy seems more sympathetic to the gentler, more ruminative pieces, where his tone retains its warmth, and his distinctive 'attack' gives the melodic lines a bell-like quality. In 'January', 'March', 'May', 'June' and 'October' there is an appropriate veneer of atmospheric calm and Ashkenazy is concerned with colour and a sustained line. But in the more demonstrative pieces (notably 'February', 'July' and 'September') the tone hardens aggressively and the playing loses some of its composure.
Overall, Ashkenazy plays with plenty of character, and his version is more involving than Yefim Bronfman's recent recording, but he is not as poetically imaginative or pianistically commanding as Pletnev, whose superbly colourful and individual recording has been repackaged as a budget two-disc set (with his Virgin Classics recording of the Pathetique Symphony). Decca's sound has an ambient warmth that complements the best of Ashkenazy's playing.'