Chopin: Etudes and ( Chiu)

An utterly magical but relatively obscure recording. Chius playing is far from orthodox, but where it is unusual it is always beautifully so. Even the most surprising approaches are grounded in rocksolid musical logic: a good case in point would be the which seems to open with an act of wilful musical oddness. In fact the approach is completely justified: the beginning of the piece is the only point where Chopin places slurs between both offbeat and dissonant notes, and the odd, gulping effect happens because Chiu is careful to observe those slurs (emphasising them, as is normally done, by slightly prolonging the first note of each slurred pair) even where most pianists dont. Elsewhere, the slurs sort of come back into sync with the harmony, rhythm, which means that even though they are still there, theyre nowhere near as noticeable. Also note how carefully crossrhythms (look out for the accents) are teased out from m. 6 onwards, even though these extraordinary little rhythmic details are ignored