Chopin does not frequently figure in Daniel Barenboim’s piano repertoire, and I suspect that this composer’s idiom is an acquired rather than natural affinity for the pianist. Barenboim’s gruff, confrontational, and often emphatic approach imparts an almost Brahmsian aura throughout the Second and Third Sonatas, particularly in his strong projection of bass lines. Yet his tendency to pound in louder, more thickly scored passages, and his heavily dispatched fleet filagree (the B minor’s second and fourth movements) give little clue to the music’s surface elegance and bel canto orientation. Try to sing along with the B-flat minor’s famous Funeral March movement: the crawling tempo will leave you gasping for air every other bar. Much of the Barcarolle lilts in choppy water, although the soft transition into the main theme’s recapitulation features some ravishing trills. Like Rubinstein, Barenboim slows down for the sublime coda, but without the older master’s sense of proportion and long line. The F minor Fantasy is broad, epic, and serious in the manner of Barenboim’s late Beethoven–and it proves to be the most convincing and cohesive interpretation on this fascinating yet uneven disc.
