Whereas not so long ago Peter Katin gave us all 19 of Chopin's surviving waltzes in his two-disc mid-price waltz-cum-polonaise album, Allan Schiller offers just 17 curiously spurning the more recently published pensive (sostenuto) E flat and the plaintive little A minor Waltzes of 1840 and 1843 respectively in favour of the seven-year-old composer's first two polonaises. And unlike Katin he offers the 17 in their more usually heard sequence and without Katin's forays into alternative editions. His playing has a wholesomely musical, straightforward directness that I would describe as quintessentially English. Far more sparing than Katin in resorting to cajoling rubato, he avoids personal idiosyncrasies of all kinds so that the music, as printed, can tell its own tale. Since the recording itself has a similar unforced naturalness you could hardly feel in safer hands at bargain price.
That said, I'm bound to add that I sometimes thought Schiller's well-trained, obedient fingers a little too impersonal in more nostalgic moods—not forgetting Op. 64 No. 2 in C sharp minor Op. 69 No. 1 in A flat (inspired by a youthful love Maria Wodzinska) and even Op. 69 No. 2 in B minor. In several more agile contexts I also felt a little more light-fingered fancy and charm would not have come amiss. However in both contexts Schiller's imagination seems to be given freer rein as the set progresses. I certainly thought he comes nearer the truth than Katin (with his unfamiliar dotted rhythm) in the spirited Op. 70 No. 1 in G flat, likewise in the warmly benign posthumous E flat major Waltz with which he concludes. Both polonaises are played with an engaging youthful purity of sound and sentiment.'