Chopin: Ballades, Impromptus, Preludes & Nocturnes (CD review)

Yuan Sheng, piano. Piano Classics PCL0049 (3-disc set).

Because Polish composer and pianist Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) was one of the world’s great writers and exponents of classical piano music, the listener will find a plethora of great recordings of his work. So any newcomer had better have something fresh and original to offer in order to compete with the likes of Maurizio Pollini, Arthur Rubinstein, Murray Perahia, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Krystian Zimerman, Tamas Vasary, Claudio Arrau, Van Cliburn, Vladimir Horowitz, Idil Biret, Daniel Barenboim, Garrick Ohlsson, Jorge Bolet, Earl Wild, and the like. But pianist Yuan Sheng and record company Piano Classics give it a decent shot.

Why? Four solid reasons, actually: First, Sheng is a consummate pianist and puts on a most-accomplished and most-entertaining show. Second, Sheng consulted the Polish National Edition of Works by Freyderyk Chopin, edited by Jan Ekier, “in which many authentic yet never before published variants of passages in various compositions came to the public’s attention for the first time,” Sheng adopting the variants whenever possible. Third, Sheng studied the oldest possible recordings of Chopin’s music, recordings dating back to the late nineteenth century when the recording artists were still in direct contact with the composer, and learned from their performances.  Fourth, Sheng plays the music on an original Pleyel grand piano built in 1845 and currently a part of the Frederick Historical Piano Collection in Ashburnham, Massachusetts. Chopin himself favored Pleyel pianos, saying “Pleyel’s pianos are the last word in perfection.” Whether Chopin played this particular piano I don’t know, but what is a matter of historical record is that Chopin owned a Pleyel of this same kind, which he used in his Paris home during his later life. And fifth, the sound quality Piano Classics obtained is quite good.

So what we’ve got here is a set of well-played, historically informed, nicely recorded Chopin piano pieces that bear comparison to the best in the catalogue.

Although I have to admit that Chopin’s four Ballades and four Impromptus on disc one are not among my absolute favorite of the composer’s tunes, they are certainly among Chopin’s more virtuosic and innovative pieces. As important, Sheng handles them with ease. Sheng is a sensitive pianist yet one who can work up a good head of steam, too. So, we get dreamy, ethereal sequences of supreme expression juxtaposed with melodramatic sections of great vigor. These works also give us our first chance to hear the Pleyel piano, which sounds slightly less rich than a modern piano while providing a wonderful attack, mellowness, resonance, and clarity, the acoustic venue further flattering the intimacy of the response.

Among the Ballades, No. 3 stands out for Sheng’s sensible, balanced approach to the famous main melody and No. 4 for its cozy, flowing gait. Among the Impromptus, No. 4 demonstrates Sheng’s ability to make even so familiar a tune shine anew; the piece practically glows, it’s so lovely.

The music on discs two and three is even more to my liking, Chopin’s twenty-four Preludes and twenty of his twenty-one Nocturnes, beautifully executed. Although the Preludes are very brief pieces, lasting no more than a minute or two each, Sheng brings a remarkable individuality to each of them. Then we come to the most-sublime, most-Romantic Chopin of all--the Nocturnes, eight of them on disc two and the remainder on disc three. Sheng plays them with a delicacy worthy of a Pollini, taking great care not to sentimentalize them, soften them, or make them sound too melancholy. The Nocturnes Nos. 2 in Opuses 9, 15, 27, and 32 come off as charmingly as anyone has played them, for all the straightforward manner Sheng brings to them, as well as Nos. 1 and 2, Op. 62.

If there’s any minor concern about the set, it that’s it might be too much of a good thing. With three full discs of Chopin piano music, it may be more than some potential buyers want to have. I wonder if it might not have been an idea for Piano Classics to have offered each of the three discs separately or even as a single disc and a two-disc set, perhaps in addition to the three-disc set? Not everyone has the money for a big multi-disc collection, no matter how reasonably priced, nor the interest in all of the music. As I say, a minor issue.

Anyway, recording engineer Christopher Greenleaf, the official recording engineer for the Historical Piano Concerts Series, made the music at a near-ideal venue for this type of affair, the Ashburnham Community Church, Ashburnham, Massachusetts, in 2010 and 2011. The room imparts a smooth, warm ambience to the piano playing, while still maintaining a fairly good lucidity. We get a most-inviting sound, especially as Mr. Greenleaf miked the piano at a moderate distance, providing a lifelike setting for the instrument. The church communicates a light, welcome sonority to enhance the realism.

To hear a brief excerpt from this album, click here:


JJP

Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

Contact Information

Readers with polite, courteous, helpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@gmail.com

Readers with impolite, discourteous, bitchy, whining, complaining, nasty, mean-spirited, unhelpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@recycle.bin.

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa