Now here’s a treasure trove for those with a sweet tooth. Godowsky’s infamous reworkings of Chopin’s Etudes are, of course, familiar, but few are aware of the diversity of Chopin arrangements conjured by Godowsky’s peers. This collection concentrates on the surprising range of treatments of the Minute Waltz, from virtuosic enhancements a la Moszkowski or Rosenthal to the wild and fantastical pastiches of Sorabji. True, the usual understanding of transcription – the idiomatic recasting of music from one medium to another – may be stretched by this sort of super-pianistic amplification, but the wit and invention of these ear-tickling fantasies have their own authentic rewards.
Musically, the most daring works are by Reger and Sorabji, who treat Chopin’s structures as springboards for their own imaginative adventures. Try Reger’s transformation of Chopin’s Etude in thirds (Op 25 No 6), cruelly recast in sixths, or the wealth of subsidiary thematic embellishment in his elegant gloss on the C sharp minor Waltz (Op 64 No 2). The Polish Chopin specialist Aleksander Michayowski wrote numerous Chopin elaborations, and his version of the Minute Waltz is as dazzling as it is demanding. Rosenthal, Joseffy and Ferrata were all Liszt pupils and their treatments, although varied, exhibit familiar traits: doubling in thirds, and a saturation of filigree embroidery and polyphonic enrichment. It’s all good harmless fun, and Chopin – like Bach – can easily withstand the treatment without suffering irrevocable damage to the identity and purity of the originals. As if to prove the point, Fredrik Ullen ends his exploration with the original D flat Waltz, and makes the astute observation that ‘our perception of a piece depends as much on our knowledge of its descendants as of its precursors’.
Ullen performs these treacherous pieces with astonishing clarity and dexterity, despatching the torrents of notes and intricate detail with unruffled aplomb. Anyone who plays Ligeti’s Etudes must have mental agility and a fearless technique, but Ullen also shows a refinement of nuance and musical shape, making music of even the most over-written material. My principal caveat is his tendency to keep the embellishing figuration too much in the foreground, at the expense of depth of sonority in the melodic line; there are also places that cry out for bolder primary colours, rather than Ullen’s pastel shades. That said, this is a remarkable achievement, and should be snapped up by all piano enthusiasts. The recorded sound is rather glassy, but crystal clear.'