Chopin: 24 Preludes, (Blechacz)

Sometimes you’re listening to a recording, and thinking it’s pretty good, and then something happens which makes you go, “Woah, wait a minute -- what was *that*?“ Blechacz’s recording of the Chopin preludes (taken from a 2007 live concert at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam), is absolutely full of such moments of elegance and subtlety. Nothing he does is extreme (cf Pogorelich), but he has such fantastic articulation that he can pull of microscopic miracles of shading and colour -- not in the Horowitzian manner, which is straightforwardly stunning, but in an introspective and (occasionally) lithely playful way. As you’ll see, often this touch is used to emphasise structural elements in the preludes, rather than merely decorate. I’ve listed out such moments below so you can follow them. No.1 – 00:00 (Note the subtle textural shift at 00:23) No.2 – 00:37 No.3 – 02:42 (Note how carefully the detached nature of the melody is observed, as well as the emphasis on tiny