Occupied Poland! responded a noted critic to this recording’s release three decades ago. Granted, Alfred Brendel inflects Chopin’s Polonaise rhythms with a slight Prussian accent, yet his command of the music is anything but rigid or unyielding. Brendel’s angular phrasings in the Polonaise-fantaisie, for example, are charged with nervous energy and linear tension, while his meticulous right hand voicings in the trio of the A-flat Polonaise nicely counterbalance the famous left hand octaves. If Brendel’s F-sharp minor Polonaise lacks the demonic underbelly of Horowitz’s riveting version, the pianist more than compensates with a more fetching, playful Andante Spianato & Grande Polonaise than many Chopin specialists can muster. Rubinstein’s proud, red-blooded Chopin Polonaises, of course, flow with more idiomatic authority. At the same time, it’s obvious that Brendel put much thought and care into what is likely to remain his sole Chopin outing on disc. While the Brendel/Chopin pairing is certainly atypical, it’s hardly a mismatch. The engineering sounds better than ever in Vanguard’s 20-bit transfer from the original master tapes. Worth hearing.
