Alessandro Deljavan’s Chopin Mazurkas abound with liberal rubato, prodigious tone color, and plenty of inner voices. You won’t find Arthur Rubinstein’s directness and sense of proportion, nor Adam Harasiewicz’s profoundly internalized feeling for the genre’s characteristic rhythm, nor Antonio Barbosa’s playfulness. However, Deljavan’s compulsively detailed affetuoso style has its own validity. Certainly it’s less forced and overwrought when compared alongside like minded Mazurka cycles from Jean-Marc Luisada, Andrew Rangell, and Russell Sherman.
I’ll cite a few examples: Not one phrase in the opening of the E minor Mazurka Op. 17 No. 2 transpires in the same tempo, yet an unexpected accent, caesura, or nuance invariably grabs your attention. The D major Op. 33 No. 2’s slight variations of voicing and emphasis with each repeated phrase reinforces the music’s earthy lilt, despite Deljavan’s essentially waltz-like demeanor (he stresses the first beat of the measure rather than the second or third, which of course is what makes a mazurka “mazurk!”).
Perhaps the more brooding, reflective pieces like Op 17 No. 4 and Op. 56 No. 3 best lend themselves to Deljavan’s aesthetic. And here’s a trick: add some 78 rpm surface scratch to Deljavan’s elegantly turned performance of the popular C-sharp minor Op. 63 No. 3, play it for a collector obsessed with dead pianists, and watch him or her gasp “Oh my God, that’s got to be Ignaz Friedman or Moriz Rosenthal….no one plays Mazurkas like that anymore!” While our references remain my overall first choices, an outlier like Deljavan will always intrigue multiple Mazurka cycle maniacs like yours truly.
