Even in a market overrun with excellent Chopin releases, André Laplante’s musical intelligence and supreme keyboard command leave strong, individual imprints. In the B-flat minor sonata’s first-movement development and both second- and third-movement trio sections Laplante metes out rubato in gradual increments rather than lurching ahead or suddenly pulling back, singing out Chopin’s right-hand melodies with lyrical beauty and definition. Given such finesse, the finale comes off surprisingly square and colorless, despite Laplante’s fleet, purposeful fingerwork.
Imagine the stern deliberation of Claudio Arrau’s F major Nocturne in a less-italicized and longer-lined manifestation and you’ll know what to expect from Laplante. He brings greater expressive intensity and dynamic heft to the Op. 63 Mazurkas than in Maria João Pires’ contemporaneous recording, and serves up a marvelously unified, dramatically contrasted, and tonally variegated F minor Fantasie that yield’s nothing to Moravec and Arrau’s modern-era paradigms. Analekta’s excellent sonics do Laplante’s full-bodied pianism (as well as his annoying vocal grunts) ample justice.
