An excellent account of the Preludes, recorded live, that manages to be powerful, empathetic and intense. Elegance is abundantly evident throughout and the pianism is 18-carat.

Grigory Sokolov is an uncompromising, exclusively serious rather than commercial artist and has consequently paid a price. Even today, he remains an awe-inspiring figure to connoisseurs rather than a wider public. His recordings, too, are sadly few, though this reissue reaffirms him as among the most formidable and characterful pianists of our time. So deeply is every bar, indeed, every note, weighed and considered that each Prelude emerges in a new and arresting light. True, he can bear down so intensely that Chopin isn't always allowed his truest or most natural voice. But glories far outweigh queries. Prelude No 2 is authentically lento and lugubrious, its morbidity realised quite without a cool and over-familiar evasion.
Again, just as you wonder whether No 13, an idyllic Nocturne, needs such strenuous pleading, you find yourself at No 16, played with a thunderous and lavishly pedalled aplomb, and to a reading of No 17 inflected with rare affection. What daring in No 18, what imaginative delicacy in No 19 (that flight into a cloudless azure), what aerial magic in No 23 with its audacious close, and when have you heard a more dramatic dip from fortissimo to pianissimo in the elegaic and processional C minor Prelude (No 20)? The sound captures Sokolov's immense dynamic range exceptionally well, and even if you're a lover of understatement or of Cortot's careless and unforgettable rapture you'll surely admit that this is among the most powerfully individual of all Chopin recordings.