Given Ingrid Fliter’s past penchant for extroverted and even capricious Chopin playing, one might assume that she’d take the wildly contrasted Preludes Op. 28 on a joyride. Instead, she often undersells the music in a respectful, restrained, and rather earthbound manner.
The first Prelude presents all of the notes on the same heavy textural level, while No. 2’s jabbing dissonances appear to float by unobserved. No. 3 hardly emerges as a supple Vivace, and is slightly overpedaled to boot, although Fliter delineates No. 5’s cross rhythms insightfully. No. 6 is stretched out to dirge-like proportions, No. 10’s downward arpeggios say nothing beyond accuracy, and the square-toed No. 13 operates within a restricted dynamic spectrum.
The sensitively shaped No. 15 loses interest when the central section’s repeated A-flats grow heavy and emphatic. No. 16’s Presto doesn’t score high on the “con fuoco” meter, yet we must take note of Fliter’s imaginative accentuations and poised fingerwork. However, if you fall asleep during No. 17’s predictable rubatos, Fliter’s sharply characterized No. 18 will wake you up; I like how she milks the five beats of rest preceding the final two chords for maximum shock effect! Fliter’s meditative, super-slow No. 23 also will take listeners by surprise.
If anything, the Mazurkas better reveal Fliter’s individual profile, especially in the C-sharp minor Op. 63 No. 3, where the canonical voices toward the end glide over the bar lines with pliable independence. Fliter’s supple, melody-oriented B major Op. 9 No. 3 Nocturne performance convinces more than her sensitive yet less interesting way with the D-flat Op. 27 No. 2 Nocturne, where her ritards at phrase ends and climaxes have a generic, boiler-plate air about them. Linn’s multi-channel sonics reproduce the piano as one might hear it from a choice seat in a resonant venue. Ten years after her 2005 disc debut, Ingrid Fliter remains an undeniably talented yet curiously inconsistent Chopin interpreter.
