Leif Ove Andsnes has perceptively matured as an artist since these reissued 1992 Chopin recordings. For that reason I am inclined to gloss over the Norwegian pianist’s callow barnstorming through the B minor Sonata’s Finale, as well as his blandly characterized Mazurka group and dutifully pale reading of the Op. 10 No. 6 and third and fourth Op. 25 Etudes. However, the young Andsnes made a veritable tour-de-force out of Chopin’s rarely heard C minor sonata. Heavily reminiscent of Weber and Hummel, this student work has two disadvantages: One, it’s very difficult to play; two, it’s a crashing bore, except for the flashy finale. Not only does Andsnes toss off its technical hurdles with effortless virility, but he almost convinces you that it’s great music. You might find more individual touches by way of Cyprien Katsaris, Nikita Magaloff, and Idil Biret, but Andsnes’ whirling, two-fisted power is hard to resist.
The B-flat minor sonata stands out for Andsnes’ headlong intensity in the opening movement, a flowingly measured Funeral march, and the imaginative phrase groupings he divines from the cryptic finale. While he gets slightly bogged down with the A minor “Winter Wind” etude’s taxing detail, he unleashes the Op. 25 No. 10’s torrential octaves in a manner that fuses fiery abandon and disciplined cool. Andsnes, incidentally, observes the exposition repeats in both B-flat minor and B minor Sonatas, a practice that makes more scholarly than practical sense in terms of each movement’s formal proportions.
