Yundi Plays Fryderyk

Chopin, Nocturnes, Yundi [Li] (released on April 20, 2010) EMI 6 08391 2 | 104'27" Online scores: Chopin's First Editions Online

We have been reviewing plenty of recordings and concerts devoted to the music of Chopin in this 200th anniversary year. Yundi Li's first release since switching from Deutsche Grammophon to EMI is arguably one of the most keenly anticipated of them. The Chinese pianist, now known simply as Yundi, was the youngest winner at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw -- in 2000, when he was just 18 -- and he has a guileless (not to say artless) way with the less purely virtuosic pieces in the composer's oeuvre, which play to his strengths as a coloristic artist skilled with vignettes sketched with just a few strokes. As noted of one of these nocturnes played by Li at his 2008 recital at Strathmore, he "simply let the tune sing, making for a graceful, peaceful performance, if perhaps undistinguished."

These are some of the most successful moments in this recording, too, which at its best is dreamy and melancholy (like, for example, op. 55/2): after all, simplicity is one of the most difficult things for some musicians to achieve. There is also, when necessary, a big, full-handed broadness (as in op. 48/1) and a mercurial sense of rubato and liberal use of the sustaining pedal that might go too far for some listeners. It is in keeping with what we have heard from this exceptionally talented, if perhaps not yet full formed pianist in the works of Chopin, including the piano concertos, a disc of scherzos and impromptus, and a Chopin recital (including a couple nocturnes, now supplanted by this complete set). It's a good recording, but not to be preferred above the now classic recording of the nocturnes by Maria João Pires (rare enough at this point to be priced at a premium) or the regal Claudio Arrau (re-released in a Philips set with all of the impromptus as a bonus, for less than either Pires or Yundi).