There are many ways to approach Chopin’s endlessly absorbing Mazurkas. Frederic Chiu opts to emphasize their melodic piquancy and subtle harmonic tensions. He is cognizant of inner counterpoints, yet doesn’t underline them. Chiu’s well-written annotations stress the music’s roots in traditional Polish dance forms, but the pianist doesn’t always put his verbal perceptions into musical practice. Scintillation, in a word, is often lacking, although Chiu does pull a rustic bunny out of the hat, so to speak, as in his boisterous, earthy treatment of the D major mazurka Op. 33 No. 2. Chiu also offers provocative textual variants, as in the popular Op. 7 No. 1 (B-flat Major), and includes all the posthumous and youthful works in this genre as well. The engineering is a trifle over-resonant, to the point where middle register chords sometimes lose definition. For the Mazurkas in toto, Garrick Ohlsson’s more playful demeanor makes a convincing foil to Chiu’s studied introspection. The aristocratic poise and idiomatic backbone Arthur Rubinstein brings to his valedictory stereo version of the “standard” 51 Mazurkas, however, continues to set modern standards.
