But for ending with the Fantaisie instead of the Barcarolle, Howard Shelley chooses the same programme here as Pollini did for his recent DG Chopin disc. Whichever you buy you will have few regrets. In their different ways both artists offer outstanding pianism. But their ways certainly are different. Whereas in the Scherzos Pollini plays with imperious authority (rather as Thalberg might have done in days gone by), Shelley, no less brilliant, is lighter-fingered, more impressionably volatile and poetic. This is emphasized by their respective recordings. Pollini emerges more forward and sharp-cut. Shelley's sound-world is softer-grained, perhaps a little nearer to what might have been heard from the composer himself. With his swifter tempo and mercurial fancy Shelley certainly comes nearer the truth in the last of the four in E major, in all its grace and joy. Here Pollini is too deliberate. The music is not as it were caught on the wing. Nor does the nostalgic E minor melody of its trio-like section find quite the same natural flow as it does from Shelley. Shelley's fluid melody is in fact a constant delight throughout the four, not forgetting the ''Sleep, little Jesus'' trio in No. 1 in B minor and the soaring second subject in No. 2 in B flat minor. Moreover, though not as insistent in accentuation or as forcefully arresting in dynamic range as Pollini, Shelley's playing is urgent enough to leave you in no doubt as to the dramatic undercurrents of protest and conflict in all three minor key pieces.
The opening melody of the Berceuse is as beautifully floated as its subsequent decoration is delicate. With his regularly rocking bass, I think he finds a simpler purity of expression here than Pollini. But though the F minor Fantaisie is finely done in its own immediately responsive, romantically yielding way, I did wonder—not least in the gravely majestic introduction (surely here a bit too slow)—if firmer rhythmic control throughout would have strengthened structural stability and enhanced the stature of the performance as a whole. Be that as it may, my overall impression remains of a player no less closely attuned to Chopin than—as we already well know—to Rachmaninov.'