That's not to say that they're not thoughtful, far from it, but here thought has driven out the younger Ash's spontaneity. There are few direct comparisons, piece for piece, with Kissin's Carnegie recitals but just listen to the younger man for nervous energy and excitement. There are more direct comparisons with Pletnev's Virgin classics disc, and again, the plaudits go to the younger man, even in the pieces written in the last few years of Chopin's all-too-short life. In those last six years he became obsessional/compulsive and exhibited behaviour bordering on the manic depressive. You wouldn't know it from this disc, in which all is well planned and played but ever so slightly, well,....dull.

The sound was praised by the Penguin guide but I have to disagree. The disc was recorded in 48khz, 24 bit PCM sound. It is clean and without even a hint of distortion but for the first two or three pieces at least I was very conscious of notes that were killed, or just die too quickly and of a very monaural perspective, both signs of a too-close recording. Another sign of that is that the sound comes at you at listener level with relatively little "height". That made it tiring listening, to be honest. It's not until the Polonaise-Fantasie that notes are sustained and decay naturally and it's not until the end of the same piece that the notes take flight in space. Of course, I listen in stereo only at the moment, maybe there'll be more bloom when I get to hear it in m/c. And my ears did adjust somewhat after about a quarter of an hour.