Frédéric Chopin - Chopin: The 2 Piano Concertos (2008)

Chopin, Piano Concertos No. 1 and 2, performed by pianist Sa Chen and the Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon, Lawrence Foster, conductor (Pentatone Classics). Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra followers will remember Sa Chen from a year ago. In October 2007, she joined the orchestra for an unusual work, a piano concerto by Clara Schumann. Chen looks about 12 on her album cover here, but she's 29. She is a promising pianist. She seemed timid last year riding the waves of the mercurial Clara Schumann, but her sensitivity shines in these Chopin concertos, which are more classical in style. -- The Buffalo News, Mary Kunz Goldman, September 2, 2008

What we do have here, though, is a pianist whose technique is such that every note registers cleanly, captured in engineering that reproduces with precision an unusually beautiful piano tone. Any pianist worth his or her salt has recorded these works but I don't think I've heard any achieve such a feeling of skipping lightness in the E minor's first movement coda or in the opening of the Finale. This is followed by incredible dexterity in the triplets around 2'20 (where as elsewhere the bassoon's line is also unusually clear) and in the left hand just after four minutes. There's the same brilliant command of passagework in the F minor's Finale and although Chen's way in the slow movements is more finely thought-out than improvisatory - and she has strangely insistent way with the spread chords in the first concerto's Larghetto, for example - her phrases are often delivered with disarming, almost Mozartian, simplicity.

Although the orchestral introductions to the two first movements are a touch routine, Foster and the Gulbenkian Orchestra provide more than adequate support, with some distinguished solo contributions - from horn and bassoon in particular. This is not necessarily a release to dislodge the front-runners in an extremely crowded field, but few have made these works sparkle quite as brilliantly as Chen. -- MusicalCriticism.com, Hugo Shirley, October 2008