Best known for her RCA recordings “Schroeder’s Greatest Hits” and “World’s Favorite Piano”, Nelly Kokinos devotes the second volume of ADN’s Chopin Collection to a program consisting of two thirds of the Chopin Nocturnes. Kokinos has a warm, pleasing sonority, and her tempos, though brisk, never feel unduly fast. But her phrases are often riddled with notey accents that emerge like lumps in cream of wheat, as opposed to the singing, sustained cantabiles one gets from Rubinstein, Arrau, Pires, or Moravec in this repertoire. Moreover, Kokinos sidesteps the darkness bubbling underneath the music’s descriptive surface. Given the competition, is this disc really necessary?
