In terms of 'bests', if there is one, then in Chopin it has to be Josef Hofmann. It's just... well listen to it.
But Hofmann was a giant, a brilliant tightly wound machine of music. If you struggle with Chopin as I do, he can't convince you to love it.
I've never warmed to a lot of other Horszowski playing. Compared to other greats known best for 'the classics' among classics (Kempff, Lupu, Firkusny, L. Kraus, Schnabel, Brendel...), Horszowski can be a little unmemorable and plain. And yet here, he brings all his experience of Bach and Mozart and Schubert to Chopin and shows what music of the soul is here.
Amid plenty of famous recordings that make me shut the music off, the complete Preludes do have a lot of great recordings: Novaes, Moisewitsch, Cortot, Friere, even (goddamnit...) Argerich. But not even Cortot can make you (me) believe in this music like this. Only Novaes compares, but Novaes is completely different - all inner voices and puckish flying through the air. Every moment of Horszowski breathes a heavenly air, intoned like Bach at a celestial organ. Hofmann and Cortot can remind of everything in Chopin that's memorable, but the 80 year old Horszowski (with 20 more to go) shows you what in Chopin is eternal. Every ephemeral minute of the next 40 could be described by Emily Dickinson:
I went to Heaven, -
'Twas a small town,
Lit with a ruby,
Lathed with down.
Stiller than the fields
At the full dew,
Beautiful as pictures
No man drew.
People like the moth,
Of mechlin, frames,
Duties of gossamer,
And eider names.
Almost contented
I could be
'Mong such unique
Society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=819&fbclid=IwAR0TLyPeFu0FDX2WaxW1VY6W_3YIM0ZpJHTIj5N8oFiIfcy051OuA8_Rm1o&v=XS0Yzbo99ws&feature=youtu.be
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