The Chopin selections reissued here count among Bella Davidovich’s first Western recordings made for Philips in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Rehearing them confirms my youthful impression of a solid pianist who made beautiful sounds, and whose interpretations were not intrinsically interesting. Cases in point: her prosaic, literal rhythmic scanning of the Third Ballade’s introduction, the lack of forward momentum in the First, rounding off of the Fourth’s dangerous edges, and the square-cut phrasing in the Impromptus.
Part of the problem is that her basic plush sonority changes little from piece to piece and lacks the kind of cutting-edge definition and varied articulations that you hear from similar “arm weight”-oriented pianists like Claudio Arrau and Ivan Moravec. This especially hurts in the Preludes. She plods through No. 2, laying on each downbeat, casts a blurry haze over No. 3’s whirling left-hand ostinato, and minimizes all harmonic tension by voicing No. 4’s repeated chords in hazy euphony. Little vehemence or inner drama emerges from the smooth surfaces Davidovich cultivates in Nos. 8, 12, 16, 18, 19, 22, and 24. In the little No. 7 she interpolates the gauche G-sharp (as did Benno Moiseiwitsch) that most likely stems from Karl Klindworth’s edition.
Krakowiak mostly proceeds on automatic pilot, where the most musically alert and rhythmically incisive playing comes from the characterful first-desk soloists. Pianophiles who respond to high craft will find plenty to savor, yet will have to look elsewhere for genuinely enlivening musicianship.
