Courtesy of the Piano Files FB group comes more great Chopin from that interwar period when great Polish Jewish pianists were like fruit growing on the trees who somehow played Chopin as though it was natural as breathing.
Gramophone had a relatively recent list of the top 10 Chopin pianists, and I realize that the industry has to promote new product that sells, but it's a tragedy to not introduce readers to the truly great Chopin out there. Sviatoslav Richter may be the greatest pianist of the 20th century, but he was a terrible Chopin player who distended Chopin's natural elegance to Busonian proportions. Pollini's metalic tone and rigid phrasing manages to make Chopin sound like Prokofiev, and when thinking of Murray Perahia I'm always reminded of TS Eliot's line about Henry James: 'a mind so fine no idea has ever invaded it.'
It's not just Rubinstein who does Chopin like second nature, wonderful as he is: it's Josef Hoffman, Ignaz Friedman, Raoul Koczalski, Mieszyslaw Horszowski, Moritz Rosenthal - I'm sure there are plenty I'm not remembering, but put any of them on and listen to the freedom with which they play this music - freedom of expression, fingers, time and space. Their understanding of Chopin is so innate that they're making it up as they go along. The rubato is so casual and natural that you know in your bones that they do it differently each time and they're barely even aware of it as they do it. It is pianism unlike any on earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62uiSe3qrco
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