Complementing his early and outstanding Collins disc of Scriabin’s Mazurkas (6/94) Artur Pizarro now gives us the 24 Preludes, Op. 11. Once again, and to an even greater extent, he confirms his glittering array of first prizes (Leeds, the Vienna da Motta in Portugal, Florida’s Palm Beach Invitational) in performances of rare pianistic refinement, arguing Scriabin’s volatility, his sudden calms and squalls, with unfaltering conviction. Nothing is hectic or rushed, everything sings and flows with a natural ease and impetus. Not even the turbulent octave play in, say, Nos. 6, 14, 18 and 20 can tempt him into the sort of disfiguring violence that can make Gavrilov’s selection of the Preludes seem crude by comparison. But the majority of Scriabin’s aphorisms, with their affectionate memories of Chopin, are romantically self-communing and in this enraptured dreamworld Pizarro could hardly show a more consistent poise or subtlety. His rubato (in No. 4) is telling but never affected or excessive, his pedalling both lavish and acute (in No. 11, with its insinuating lilt and sultry undertow). In No. 16 his way of pushing each sinister phrase forward suggests the music’s darkness, its emerging and receding violence, and, throughout, his flexibility and warmth are almost tangible.
Pizarro’s easy and immaculate technique, too, make light of Shostakovich’s more quirky Op. 34 Preludes (nicely characterized in Collins’s notes as part of his “young Turk” phase). Here, he is equally at home in the vaudeville pranks of No. 6, or the stillness of No. 17, the presto tarantella whirl of No. 9 or the dark ceremonial of No. 14. Collins’s sound beautifully captures Pizarro’s unfailing tonal bloom and his way of suggesting Tobias Matthay’s dictum “la souplesse avant tout”. All these performance surpass Martha Deyanova’s identical Nimbus coupling and Olli Mustonen’s more brittle, Gramophone Award-winning Shostakovich (intriguingly partnered with Alkan’s 25 Preludes, Op. 31).
Finally, it is difficult to resist adding that a pianist of such calibre should hardly be restricted to music’s byways, however delectable. The time has surely come to hear him in standard as well as novel repertoire – in Chopin or in a complete Ravel cycle.'