Customer Reviews

Chopin: Complete Piano Music

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Idil biret's Chopin recordings first released in 1991/92 received very favourable reviews. The eminent musicologist Henry Louis de La Grange wrote in Le Nouvel Observateur in France "Idil Biret, this great pianist is playing Chopin in its entirety in a breathtaking interpretation. One could not imagine that the Ballades, Preludes, Sonatas, Scherzi, Polonaises,Nocturnes, Mazurkas and the Concertos would today find and interpreter of this dimension". Germany's most important music critic Joachim Kaiser writing in the Bunte Magazine put Biret's interpretation of Chopin among the best available versions. In the US, Igor Kipnis wrote in Stereophile that Biret's complete Chopin edition stood among the highest echelons of contemporary Chopin playing. The readers of the Classic CD magazine in the United Kingdom selected Biret's Chopin preludes among the best recordings of 1993. In 1995 Biret's complete editon received in Poland a "Grand Prix du Disque Frederic Chopin" awarded once in every five years (there were 46 entries that year and two were given prizes).

No-one with the slightest interest in Chopin should miss Idil Birets recordings of his complete works. There are a few minor disappointments (notably the Waltzes and the Concertos), but most of these interpretations rank with the finest available, and Biret plays with a freshness of approach that sheds new light on this wonderful music. Even those who think they live happily with Pollini, Ashkenazy etc., should check this out. You might be surprised! The piano-sound is slightly to the bright and thin side, but enjoyable enough.

Ms. Gerber sums it up very well above: the playing is not what you'd find from Rubinstein, Cortot, or Ashkenazy, but it is still better than many recordings out there, and is a tremendous bargain.

Chopin only wrote one piece in his entire life that didn't include the piano, so a collection this complete of his piano music is a fascinating look into Chopin's creative life, and as a study in music history, it is worth the time. Nevertheless, people who are searching out definitive performances of more familiar works should probably search elsewhere.

Now, I am not a professional music critic, and I would never say that you should trust me over the critics. In fact, much of the acclaim this set receives is merited. Her first and fourth ballades are fine performances, and the scherzi and polonaise in A flat are well executed. That being said, I personally found several other performances to be large disappointments. (For the record, her recording was not universally praised, and some of the favourable reviews, like mine, are somewhat back-handed, but overall the set was a critical success.)

In particular, I couldn't help but think that the Berceuse, third ballade, several of the preludes, the First Concerto, and the Barcarolle were mediocre. In the Barcarolle, Biret's tempi are erratic and constantly changing, sometimes in the opposite way as Chopin indicated! (Where Chopin writes "poco piu mosso" at the transition to the B section, Biret slows to a crawl) Her dynamics are similarly strange and sometimes backward, and the climax is rushed and unmoving. For the third Opus 28 Prelude in e minor--probably one of the best-known preludes after the Raindrop in D flat--Biret takes almost a full measure's worth to play the opening figure (which is written to last one beat), and then proceeds to choose an allegretto tempo despite Chopin's directions to play slowly. She indulges here, and throughout much of the rest of the CDs, in a rubato that breaks momentum and makes it very difficult to follow the melody. It is as if a singer were to take a breath in the middle of important words--it quickly becomes hard to understand a thing she was saying.

It is true that many performers deviate from the score, sometimes in ways that enhance the musicality of the performance. Indeed, even Chopin was reported to play with dynamics that were different than the ones he himself wrote in the score, but Biret's indulgences take away from, rather than add to, the performances. I personally found many of the interpretative decisions to be distracting, or even unmusical.

I don't mean this to sound at all mean-spirited, but if I were to sum up my feelings of this set in one sentence, it would be this:

It is worth every dollar of its relatively low price.

I got this box set because I wanted to have all of Chopin's piano music without investing in the redundancies of various artists' recordings. In that respect the price value is unbeatable. Much has been said about Idil Biret's playing and it is fine enough.

The packaging is unimaginative. You get the fifteen individual CDs of the series tucked into a slip case. That's a lot of jewel box plastic and shelf space that could have been cut down to at least half. The booklets give thumbnail analyses of the works, but much of the historical background is repeated. Fifteen iterations of "Interpreting Chopin" and Biret's biography is just a waste of paper. Naxos has made its name with quality, no-frills, budget releases. They may have done a cost analysis against repackaging but there seems little consideration toward the end user experience.

The mastering is careless. In the Variations and Sonatas, for instance, the attack for one track happens at the tail end of the previous track. This becomes evident and annoying when listening on an MP3 player. You get First movement-S[squib-pause]econd movement resumed. If the track indexing was done by an automated system they should have calibrated it a few milliseconds earlier. If it was done manually, shame on you.

I really enjoyed listening to Biret's approach of chopin on these 15 discs. I have heard other pianists play and i personally find every one of them comparable and each have their own pros and cons. The price of this influenced me over the grammophon's boxset.

These would not be my first choice for Chopin. I'd go with Rubinstein or Ashkenazy before choosing this one. I think some of it has to do with the harsh piano sound. It doesn't suit Chopin's music, but that is not necessarily Biret's fault. I'd like to see a pianist do a modern recording of Chopin's music in analogue on vinyl. I love the warm (sometimes crackly) sound of vinyl. It makes me smile. These recordings are completely opposite. They don't feel very personal or warm at all.

This is a "must have" for anyone who is into piano music or who has played Chopin as a student--like myself. It is the most comprehensive set I know of, and the performance levels are consistently above average. Also, the recording quality in general is good (some of these lower-priced CDs have weak signals and/or muffled sound--but not this set).

However, there are some parts where the pieces are either badly played or too weirdly interpreted. For examle, Idil Biret is a very, very good pianist with a range of emotions and tremendous skills...or so I thought until I heard her Etude #12 (Vol. #2), which is by far THE WORST I have ever heard by anyone, including my peers back in the music school. I don't know if she meant to interpret it the way she played it, but it's a mess! She rushes through some of the notes while overemphasizing and stretching others unnecessarily. So much so that she almost makes it sound as though she doesn't have strong enough skills to play this piece (which, I am sure, isn't the case--but it sounds like it).

But, still, it is a good buy overall.

I found it so refreshing (and something of a relief) to read the review by C.Pontus.T and find someone who was bucking the trend of praising Biret to the hilt.

I first came across her when listening to Jeremy Siepmann's audio biography of Chopin where she plays the musical examples. I couldnt help but laugh when hearing Siepmann talk about Chopin's delicate shimmering style and close attention to the use of pedal then following this with Biret clunking her way club-footedly through the etudes. "People complained that Chopin played too quietly" we hear followed by Biret bashing it out in the left hand. I was beginning to think I had lost my own critical faculties when I read the reviews of the complete cycle and found that no-one had noticed the awkward ungainly rhythms, stiff fingered arpeggios and overall sheer clumsiness.

I borrowed the complete cycle and lived with it for a month in the hope that perhaps there was something here that I was missing. There wasnt. I was pleased to give it back. I really cant understand how so many people can rate this recording so highly. There are way better performances out there (Ashkenazy, Rubinstein, Argerich) at about the same price. The recording quality is also poor giving the piano a harsh and ugly sound that seems to make even the gentlest nocturne sound aggressive and threatening - or is that Biret's playing? - its hard to tell.

I hate being critical of musicians. They deserve respect and encouragement. Playing the piano is difficult and there is no doubt that Biret is a very competent player and recording the complete Chopin cycle is a great achievement. But at the end of the day why settle for competent when there is genius around?

Having been listening to Chopin's celestial piano music ever since I was a young boy, I will probably never stop marveling at the pure beauty of his unique way of conjuring up those dangerously memorable themes, harmonies and figurations. There are days when one of his Etudes, Preludes, Mazurkas or Nocturnes just starts playing itself inside one's head. Whilst still young, I purchased a large amount of Naxos CDs, of which Chopin's piano music account for a major part. Today, I still find considerable pleasure in Szekely's Ballades, Scherzos, Waltzes, Sonatas and Concertos (though not as much in his Etudes), in Szokolay's Barcarolle and Fantaisie-Impromptu as well as in Zaritskaya's Polonaise-Fantaisie.

Of course, playing any well written piano music is difficult--that is, to do it so well that the music emerges as an autonomous being. In the case of Chopin, it is even more difficult as his music is composed with such flexibility and plasticity that the chances of going wrong are immense. Generally, Idil Biret avoids going so much wrong that the result is less than adequate. Alas, though, there are a number of occasions where her playing is not worthy of preserving on disc--most notably the Allegro de Concert, the Barcarolle, the Nocturnes, the Mazurkas, and most of all the Etudes (this certainly not what the music says!--cf. e.g. Op 10 Nos 1, 8 & 12 or Op 25 Nos 3, 8 & 11). So, what is then the problem with Biret's Chopin playing? Well, it can rather neatly be summed up in that it is driven by her very own erratic will rather than the natural force inherent in the music. This implies highly eccentric tempos and rubatos, exaggerated sforzandos, weird pedaling, stiff keystroke, and a clumsy technique that simply is not refined enough to handle the music.

Considering the fact that Ohlsson's complete reference survey is available at virtually the same price (even less on amazon.com!) and that the 13-disc Ashkenazy set costs half, there is really no rational motivation whatsoever acquiring the Biret set. Ohlsson is unsurpassed; Ashkenazy is always good, sometimes great; Biret is mostly functional, sometimes poor.

Nowadays, Naxos appears to know how to record the piano (e.g. for Glemser in Scriabin, Prokofiev and Schumann). However, the recordings given to Biret are, if relatively consistent, among the ugliest produced in the 1990s. The sound is sharp, boxy and clunky, making the piano sounding more like a digital Yamaha than a Bösendorfer concert grand.

This 15-CD set, covering all of Chopin's piano solo music, is the only complete set out there, and at a bargain price, it is one of the best sets out there that everyone should have.

Some of the playing and interpretations are controversial, such as the lack of noticable dynamics in the nocturnes and other pieces. However, overall, the quality and the price is hard to beat.

Biret is a world-class pianist, with lots of experience. While this set doesn't bring out all of Chopin's character, it is still a new view of Chopin to many pianists out there, and for the price, it is a must-have for everyone out there/