Recommended Reviews

‘Chopin Now’ is the title of this new disc from the Norwegian pianist Håkon Austbø, a concept explored and explained in the thought-provoking booklet essay, the gist of which is that Chopin is as relevant today as he has ever been. Austbø couples the Four Ballades with late pieces and, throughout, he’s keen to emphasise the rhapsodic, in-the-moment quality of the music. This works well in the innocent opening of the Second Ballade; the Third, too, begins with a certain freedom, though here both Perahia and Zimerman are effective for their greater initial reserve, the repeated A flat octave sounding more brazen in Austbø’s hands. What concerned me more, though, is that in places he sounds effortful – his Polonaise-fantaisie never truly takes wing – and his filigree is less silken than some (just sample from 5'16" of the First Ballade). Turn to the teenage Argerich, caught by Berlin Radio in 1959 (DG, 7/10), and you hear what’s missing.

The Fourth Ballade begins better, though Austbø is not as dreamy as Anderszewski; but as the temperature hots up, the textures feel dense rather than airborne. And as a whole it lacks the sense of inevitability that Fliter and Zimerman find. While the Barcarolle is spot-on in terms of tempo, Austbø’s weighting of Chopin’s chords could have had more finesse.

And in the two Op 62 Nocturnes, Austbø doesn’t come close to Pires’s unerring sense of narrative in the first. In the second, one of the most elliptical of all Chopin’s works, Hough illuminates its minimalist lines with a complete naturalness that the Norwegian can’t quite emulate.