Shaping Chopin: Waltzes, Nocturnes, Mazurkas [Pure DSD]

Anna Fedorova is one artist who brings Chopin's music to wonderous life. She is a compelling artist. She has virtuosic technique, but she plays in service to the music and the composer. There is no grand-standing, no dazzling finger-play just to show-off what she's capable of doing on the keyboard. No indeed. With Anna Fedorova there is only love for the music and love for communicating what she hears the composer seeking to share with us.

There is an intelligence to her performances that I find so akin to what I've enjoyed with the great Ivan Moravec. But where Moravec could be a bit terse, Fedorova is elegance and light (but with immense underlying power—never be mislead). Both are humble performers bringing deep intelligence to their interpretations. Fedorova adds to this a strong intuitive empathy.

...for over an hour, I am captivated by her musical selections and the incredible communicative skill with which she shares them with us on this album. The Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-Sharp Minor, op. 66, which concludes the album is simply dazzling. The technique is brilliant, the finger control amazing. But it is the beauty of line, the control of phrase, the delicacy of touch, that makes this such a remarkable conclusion to what is a fully remarkable album.

Add to these wonderful performances the astoundingly excellent recording quality in Pure DSD256 by Jared Sacks, and you have a recording to treasure and my highest recommendation.

I can’t and I won’t hide the fact that I’m an avid admirer of Anna Borysivna Fedorova ever since I heard her play Rachmaninoff. She equals men in technique, bravura, and yes, power, but adding what they often don’t or manage to a lesser degree: Lyrical poetry. Listening to her shaping Chopin, the same is true. In all my subjectivity I have no hesitancy to add Anna to the above hit list.

Reading Federova’s personal notes is a pleasant and most revealing exercise. “While performing Chopin’s miniatures it feels like diving into a living painting, artistically shaping its unique story, colors and characters with music”. Concluding with the hope that “the awe-inspiring magic of Chopin’s music will comfort you amidst difficult times (Covid-19) as it has done for me, and that it sweeps you away into the fantasy world of your dreams!”

True to what she says, the Grande Valse Brillante in E-Flat Major, Op.18, with which the program opens, comes to life as a comprehensive story. Precise and articulate in its aristocratic beauty; strong and convincing in its loving recite. Several of the following ‘miniatures’, so much appreciated by the beau monde of the Paris ‘salons’, become in her interpretation sensually and handsomely crafted masterpieces, which continue to appeal time and again.

Most of us will have sets of the ‘complete’ Nocturnes, Mazurkas, Waltzes, etc. Here we must follow Anna’s Choice, a carefully varied program. Was it done to please the listener? That’s what happened to me. But we must give her at the same time and above all much more credit for having selected a tastefully designed combination of ‘miniatures’ rendering her recital more attractive than the usual complete set of any of them. Indeed, it swept me away into the fantasy world of my dreams, best concretized in the concluding Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 66. Compared to the many readings I have; this one stands out as one of the most compelling versions I own.

Great music and great soloists, like Anna Fedorova, deserve the best possible sound reproduction to lift the music into the reality of a concert experience at home. The Pure DSD engineering by Channel Classics obliges and my ears concur: The concert grand sounds like a concert grand. What else do we need to make a dream come true?