No one did more than Chopin to transform the study from a technical exercise into a concert-piece, that’s to say from prose into poetry. But technical hurdles abound: pianists can roughly be divided into those out to surmount them with the most dazzling virtuosity, and those for whom the espressivo behind the notes means more. Malcolm Binns belongs to the latter group. Eschewing break-neck tempo throughout he allows time for the music to breathe, and for melody, whether exposed or hidden, to sing. Never does he produce a harsh sound. The recording, made in the Concert Hall of Cambridge University’s Faculty of Music, is consistently mellow – even if not perhaps of ideal textural translucency for this composer’s crystalline sound-world.
Nothing on the disc is more haunting than the introspectively laden C sharp minor Etude (No. 7) in the maturer and richer Op. 25 set – and that in itself testifies to the quality of Binns’s musicianship. I wish he’d found the same intensity for the similarly searching E flat minor piece (No. 6) in the Op. 10 collection of four year earlier (even a steadier exploration of its intricately chromatic accompanying semiquavers would have helped). Stormier outbursts in their turn sometimes need greater urgency, with a tauter rhythmic challenge – notably the con fuoco octaves of No. 10 in B minor (Op. 25) and the torrential semiquavers of its successor in A minor. There’s a trace of reserve in Binns’s characterization, a tendency to take the breath-taking just a little too much for granted. Even in the idyllic, lyrical central episode of the Op. 25 B minor piece how much more wonderment could have been conveyed by a second or two’s longer pause at such a moment of climax as at 3'08'' in band 22.
But pleasure predominates: this artist’s phrasing is so full of grace. With legendary rivals like the commanding Pollini and the fancifully imaginative Ashkenazy – alongside such younger Ariels as Lortie and Berezovsky – this disc could have been enjoyed by a wider public if offered at medium price.
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