Agustin Anievas’ 1966 Chopin Etudes proved to be both more interesting and perplexing than what I remembered from my long-since-decollected Seraphim LP. The pianist hardly “mows these treacherous twisters right down to the ground,” as one highly respected piano critic wrote many years ago; instead, he seems to glide on the surface of the keys, resulting in sundry unplayed and ghosted notes amid rapid figurations. Closer listening also reveals little technical smudges and strange misreadings (in the C major Op. 10 No. 1 etude he plays an E-natural melody note instead of a D-natural on the fourth beat of measure four).
Yet Anievas is capable of pulling fresh interpretive bunnies out of old hats. Note his subtle hand balances throughout Op. 25 No. 3, or the counterline he uncovers in Op. 10 No. 2’s right hand chords underneath the difficult 16th-note runs. You can skip the pianist’s prosaic, unimaginative phone-ins of lyrical etudes like the Op. 10 Nos. 3 and 6, and the nocturne-like Op. 25 No. 7. Of the four Ballades, the first two command attention for Anievas’ exciting and rock-solid passagework, particularly in the F major Ballade’s tumultuous central section and the G minor’s tricky coda. The A-flat Ballade, on the other hand, is deficient in poetry and lyrical grace, while Anievas’ tempo fluctuations in the Fourth Ballade never manage to move the music forward.
The Waltzes, on the other hand, are wonderfully deft, lightweight, and full of flair. What’s more, Anievas offers interesting textual variants on what we usually encounter, for instance, in the “Farewell” (Op. 69 No. 1) and “Minute” (Op. 64 No. 1) waltzes. EMI’s newest remastering of the Waltzes improves upon an earlier EMI Encore budget-price release, coupled with Chopin’s first three Impromptus.
