Search - Frederic Chopin, Ronald Smith :: Ronald Smith plays Chopin, Vol. 1

A Disappointment

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 01/01/2004

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I have long had a positive regard for pianist Ronald Smith primarily because he was one of the early pianists to record much of the music of one of my 'guilty pleasures,' the piano music of Charles-Henri-Valentin Alkan, the only-recently-popular French contemporary of Chopin. He even wrote a biography of the composer. I'd not heard much of his playing of other composers. I expected this CD, one of two he has made of the music of Chopin, to be something special. But it isn't really. Although there are flashes of beauty that make you catch your breath, particularly in the feather-light figurations in, say, the C-sharp Minor Scherzo, Op. 39, there seems to be a lack of backbone in these readings. This is not to say he doesn't play assertively at times, as in the Polonaise-Fantaisie in A Flat, Op. 61. And there are some good readings here, as of the Tarentelle in A Flat, Op. 43 and the C-minor Nocturne, Op. 48, No. 1. But overall it's as if he were noodling his way through the program, his mind elsewhere. Any sense of architecture, any notion of reaching an ultimate goal is pretty much missing. There is a kind of underpowered lack of commitment that I found dispiriting. His piano is imperfectly tuned as well, alas.I wish I could be more positive, but I can't recommend this disc.Scott Morrison"