Chopin: The Four Ballades, Berceuse, Barcarolle, Scherzo No. 4

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential recording
Ever since the start of his career as a sensational child prodigy, Kissin has displayed a strong affinity for the music of Chopin, in concert and on numerous records. Here he performs a program of substantial pieces: the four ballades, written several years apart and not conceived as a group, which nevertheless complement one another through their contrasts as well as their shared narrative and descriptive atmosphere; the lovely, peaceful berceuse; the swaying, rocking barcarolle; and the brilliant, witty Scherzo No. 4. Throughout, Kissin's effortless virtuosity, his beautiful, singing tone, his command of voicing, dynamics, touch, color, and legato are phenomenal; cascades of notes flow from under his fingers with the speed and glittering lightness of dancing waters; his build-ups achieve orchestral sonorities. Musically, he seems to have lost some of his irresistible earlier spontaneity; the dramatic nature of the ballades encourages exaggeration, and the liberties sound a bit planned. However, the berceuse is a simple, expressive lullaby; the barcarolle surges to a grand climax; the scherzo sparkles with humor--its middle part projects a plaintive, ardent yearning. --Edith Eisler

Tracks:

Ballade No. 1, Op.23 In G Minor
Ballade No. 2, Op.38 In F
Ballade No. 3, Op.47 In A-Flat
Ballade No. 4, Op.52 In F Minor
Berceuse, Op.57
Barcarolle, Op.60
Scherzo No. 4, Op.54 In E

Amazon.com essential recording

Ever since the start of his career as a sensational child prodigy, Kissin has displayed a strong affinity for the music of Chopin, in concert and on numerous records. Here he performs a program of substantial pieces: the four ballades, written several years apart and not conceived as a group, which nevertheless complement one another through their contrasts as well as their shared narrative and descriptive atmosphere; the lovely, peaceful berceuse; the swaying, rocking barcarolle; and the brilliant, witty Scherzo No. 4. Throughout, Kissin's effortless virtuosity, his beautiful, singing tone, his command of voicing, dynamics, touch, color, and legato are phenomenal; cascades of notes flow from under his fingers with the speed and glittering lightness of dancing waters; his build-ups achieve orchestral sonorities. Musically, he seems to have lost some of his irresistible earlier spontaneity; the dramatic nature of the ballades encourages exaggeration, and the liberties sound a bit planned. However, the berceuse is a simple, expressive lullaby; the barcarolle surges to a grand climax; the scherzo sparkles with humor--its middle part projects a plaintive, ardent yearning. --Edith Eisler

Customer Reviews:

More reflective, less impetuous, still great.......2005-11-01

Among modern versions, I think only personal preference divides Kissin's Chopin Ballades from those by Pollini, Ax, and Zimerman, although others would also add Perahia to the list (he's too tame and correct for me). Kissin was 27 when this CD came out, but his early virtuosic impetuosity--as evidenced in his 1993 Carnegie Hall Chopin recital, also on RCA--has been replaced with reflectiveness. In fact these are slower than average Ballades, a full minute slower in each one than Pollini.

Kissin uses this extra room to ruminate, and luckily his poetic nuances are sensitive and convincing. When a blast of virtuosity is called for, he certainly supplies it, but mercurial fleetness isn't much in evidence. The Gramophone went into raptures over this CD, and I did too when I first heard it. The approach is large-scaled, the piano is a fine one and well recorded, and there is every evidence of Kissin's mastery.

On relistening, though, I wish Kissin had been less deliberate. Ax shows more spontaneous passion, Pollini more intense propulsiveness and virtuosic elan. This is sitll a superlative example of how well Kissin plays Chopin and always has, ever since he was ten or twelve. Highly recommended.

Listen it without concept.......2005-06-03

I don't like writings like this but i can't help myself after reading previous reviews to express my opinion here. First to be said is that I simply love Kissin's interpretation of Chopin. But why: it is absolutely free of any so called 'romantic interpretations' or skills how to perform this music. Kissin is playng his own way and if you've got your own concept of "how to play Chopin" before, you may have to get lost in his playing. But for me it's like adventure or experience follow his mind (& fingers) playing this amazing music. It is so modern! If you know Brad Mehldau quotations of Chopin, you have to see this is very similar to it. Of course, Mehldau's playng is full of rhythm, but there is the same point: beautiful music comming from the past, which can be really contemporary - through 'contemporary' playing of it. Well, Kissin sometimes acts like punk in this delightfull process, but his playing still offers the 'GOING THERE AND BACK AGAIN' experience.
So please listen it carefully and (if possible), through away all your concepts before experience this music.

There is better.......2004-06-12

There are numerous reviewers saying that Kissin "opened their eyes to Chopin's unique talent" and such. Well, if Kissin could do that with this set of recordings, buy Horowitz's Favorite Chopin volumes and let your mind be boggled. This is how I feel whenever I perform a piece . . . mushy, condensed, unclear. The unknowledgeable audience does not have any idea that the performance could have been better, but it could have! Let me tell you, Kissin is fantastic technically, but absolutely incomparable to Horowitz or even many others.

Buy this if you really want to. Kissin's G Minor Ballade is restrained, something entirely unacceptable in Chopin.

The line between pianism and interpretation.......2004-06-04

Kissin, albeit having a fantastic technical arsenal, in this recording, uses it for purely pianistic effect. Chopin's lucidity; the way his music ebbs and flows, is sacrificed, and thus the recording fails to captivate. What one really needs, in my opinion, in the Ballades, is a sense of a tale. Chopin, like Schumann, can really tell a story in the Ballades.
Think of the second Ballade. The atmosphere on the surface is gentle, and lyrical. Underneath this veneer of calm, though, there is a slightly obsessive, darker undercurrent to the piece. Kissin, totally fails to evoke this physcological undercurrent, whereas someone like Arrau or Moiseiwitsch, or even Tamas Vasary, brings to this music simultaeneously a technical accomplishment, wholly at the service of the music. Schumann spoke of the second Ballade,

"the music would inspire a poet to write words to it," he said, ironically, considering its possible poetical inspiration as a piece of music

Would Kissin's playing inspire a poet, or is his approach to abstract, too fantastic?
The line between pianism and artistry is perilous. A performance can sound musically impressive, yet technically lacking and vice versa; the music can be too safe, too technically impressive to offer any hidden insights. Some pianists tend to distort the music, adding their own expression, their own dynamics... Kissin, unfortunately, for me, at the moment seems of this tendency, along, sometimes, with Horowitz.
Horowitz and Kissin (not all of the time) bend around with the music until it is moulded into their own labrynth, and violate the music. Chopin was said, like Schubert to have despised the thumping of virtuosos. Kissen needs to heed this advice!
Those who admire this performer, really ought to listen to the playing of Vlado Perlemuter, a real poet in sound. He mastered a whole spectrum of tonal perspective, as a means to an end, and his playing of Chopin and Ravel,like Schnabels' Schubert, at it's best was incomparable.

p.s I heard Kissen play at the Proms in London. He played Brahms 2. The performance was sickening. It's delivery was at breakneck speed, and had little if any artistic insight. To quote Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (changing the original quotation's description of the music of an English composer with performer) his perfomance,

"underneath it's trumpery of Pinchbeck Brummagem-Benares nick-nackery, oozes with glutinous commonplace."Playing" (this is not Sorabji's word, but mine) like this always reminds one of those spurious "liqueur" chocolates grandly labelled "Grand Marnier", "Maraschino", Benedictine", leading one to expect the delicious gastronomic sensations, the incomparable marquis knows so well how to excite, but which are found actually to yield a horrid sickly sugary concoction- insipid and nauseating."

This reflects Kissin's style in a microcosm.

Buy it if you wish, but beware!!

incredible - but be careful..........2003-10-07

Kissin is a dazzling performer, and his versions of the ballades is essential for anyone building a library of classical piano music. However, Kissin, I'm going to venture to say here, is as unpianistic as Glenn Gould was. If Gould put everything under a microscope, Kissin approaches everything in panorama. Both are extremes, and both are perverse (which does not mean Gould wasn't a genius). Both pianists freely compromise a composer's intentions to fit their personal styles.

Kissin has a fluid, liquid-silver tone, and a dynamic range obviously geared to the concert hall. He makes things sound big and spacious. His technique is so sophisticated that he has driven himself permanently to some misty, rarefied plateau in the sky. The result is that sometimes you feel nothing at all has happened. His performances never touch the ground.

Having said that, it IS a lovely place when you're up there with him. But it's impersonal. People that buy this album that don't own any other version should equip themselves with something a little more standard while they're at it. I have an affinity for Arrau's ballades. With Kissin, you miss the close Chopin, the dear Chopin.

Anyway, No. 2 is absolutely frightening. Sometimes you wonder if he's playing the same music...

-Selah

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