Zimerman plays Chopin in London february 2010 (1)

Krystian Zimerman brought magisterial tone to Chopin - but where was the deeper expressivity?

By Ivan Hewett
Telegraph
Published: 6:19PM GMT 23 Feb 2010


This being Chopin’s anniversary year, the South Bank Centre’s International Piano series is making a feature of notable Chopin specialists. Last Tuesday’s recital was given by one of them, the great Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman.

Chopin was a great aristocrat of the piano, never flustered, never making any obvious effort. Few pianists can muster a similar aristocratic ease and panache but his fellow countryman Zimerman is certainly one. At the end of his recital not a hair of his splendid white mane was out of place, and he bowed with that deep humility only a natural aristocrat can bring off. Barely a note was out of place either, which is quite a feat in a programme which included both of Chopin’s titanic sonatas, his most tumultuous scherzo (the 2nd) and the Barcarolle, which despite its sunny, swaying charm is devilish to play.

Of course there’s an innocent pleasure to be had in sheer virtuosity, and there was plenty of that here – even in the modest opening F sharp Nocturne, where the end of the melody was curled round so expertly, and the inner voices touched in just enough to register. In the 2nd sonata that followed the first movement raced to its own doom with such splendid finality that the audience burst into spontaneous applause.

But that was the first alarm bell – because shouldn’t the end of that movement leave a sense of unfinished business? It was as if the tragic quality of the music had become coloured or even usurped by Zimerman’s magnificent technique. There were other moments when his panache and ’mastery’ seemed to push out any deeper expressivity. The great B flat Scherzo was thrown off with magnificent ease, but there was no mystery in that strange bottled-up opening phrase — so the contrast with the outburst that followed, despite Zimerman’s magisterial tone, felt muted.

And why take the scherzo of the 3rd sonata at such a lick, if the aim wasn’t to make our collective jaw drop? Which it did, in a way, but the price paid was that the seductive curl of the line didn’t register, as it sped by far too fast.

Happily in the final piece, the lovely swaying Barcarolle, Zimerman reminded us why he’s thought of as a great pianist. The shaping of the long paragraphs, and the balancing of ornamental lingering with dance-like impetuousness, was really wonderful.