Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 / Ballade No. 4 / Polonaise-fantaisie (rec 1947-1957)

"Horowitz leads us a merry dance over the course of seventy-six and a half incendiary minutes of pianism. The recordings were made between 1949 and 1957 and there is a sizeable bonus in the presenting of the 1949 recording of the F minor Ballade, soon to be withdrawn. It was re-recorded in 1952. The transfers of all these items are really first class."
(MusicWeb June 2008)

Although Horowitz's concept of Chopin, characterised by extremes of dynamics and tempi, divided the critics over the years, as one of them wrote in 1958 of a disc containing the Barcarolle heard here,'If your choice in Chopin interpretation runs to largescale, grandiose treatments, magnificent panoramas of sound, delicacy and yet tremendous virility, obtain this record by all means. The overall effect is breathtaking.' The tempo Horowitz chooses for the first movement of this 1950 recording of Piano Sonata No. 2 may seem surprisingly slow, yet the relationship between the first and second subject is far more logical than many performances where the second subject is often played much slower than the first. The 1949 recording of the Ballade No. 4 has never been reissued but is presented here for its rarity and in conjunction with the artist's approved 1952 remake of the same work.