Wojciech Świtałar - Chopin: Ballades, Nocturnes, Scherzo (2012) CD-Rip

Polish pianist Wojciech Switala is capable of a wide interpretive range, but here he reins himself in and presents straightforward readings of Chopin's four ballades, two nocturnes, and the Scherzo in B minor, Op. 31. That's all to the good, for in these readings he lets his piano do the talking. It's an 1848 Pleyel model from Paris, making it contemporaneous with the last year of Chopin's life and quite typical of the instruments on which he would have played his own music. It's not so far from a modern grand, but the spaces it defines are different. The piano somehow brings a greater sense of surprise in big attacks and sforzandos, and pedaled passages, as so often with 19th-century pianos, dissolve into pastel colors. In general, the effect is to diminish the monumental quality the ballades, in particular, have a more lyric flavor than usual. There's nothing really out of the ordinary in the way Switala plays a familiar tune like the main theme of the Ballade in G minor, Op. 23, but the overall effect is intriguingly intimate, quite distinct from the product of a modern grand piano. Sure, Chopin might well have loved a modern grand if he had lived to hear one, and there's no overriding requirement to play Chopin on a historical instrument, but this recording might make a believer out of you. This is one of a pair of recordings; the other presents the same pianist in the same music on a modern piano.