EMI’s Debut series recalls DG’s long-defunct but similarly invaluable venture; a golden opening for young artists of exceptional talent. Nelson Goerner is Argentinian, 28 years old, a student of Maria Tipo, and devotes his most personal and inflammatory recital to Chopin’s later masterpieces. A player of exalted poetic verve he invariably suggests a live rather than studio response.
How fearlessly he launches the B minor Sonata’s imperious opening, never using Chopin’s maestoso instruction as an excuse for undue rhetoric or inflation. Even the startling sense of hiatus contained in the first movement repeat (can this really be authentic?) makes sense given such voltage and intensity. His second movement Scherzo is as colourful as it is volatile and in the Largo the playing is, again, gloriously free-spirited and keenly felt. His transition out of the Polonaise-Fantaisie’s central Piu lento, back to Chopin’s principal idea, shows a compelling sense of the composer’s depth and introspection, and if his choice of the Fourth Scherzo is surprising, given such seriousness, he is once more brilliantly attuned to one of Chopin’s most elusive and mercurial major-key flights of fancy. The C minor Nocturne pulses with a profound sense of elegy, its central octaves fired off like so many ceremonial cannons, and Goerner makes something very special out of the Fourth Ballade’s coda, tempering Chopin’s bravura with a fine sense of melodic intricacy.
Finally, while EMI could have usefully told us which Chopin edition is used, they have provided this most personal and distinctive artist with an impressively bold and spacious recording.'