Beethoven: Sonata,Op.27,No.2 / Franck: Prelude, choral et fugue / Brahms: Paganini Variations ~ Kissin
A wizard of technical control since his prodigy days, Kissin simply uses this as a foundation to probe the depths of such core repertory items as the ones on this collection. It takes a truly subtle musicality and grasp to make the endlessly recordedMoonlightsound fresh, but Kissin has the goods, pulling the carpet from underneath and making you really notice, with his unsentimental, steady tempo, how unsettling Beethoven's harmonic fluctuations are in a first movement of startling inwardness. Kissin allows the middle minuet to blossom within the sonata's larger nightscape, while he pushes the finale'scri de coeurto its heaven-storming edge. He likewise traces the late-19th-century gothic labyrinth of Franck'sPrelude, Choral et Fuguewith an absorbing blend of delicacy and power. But the real highlight of this disc is the gloriously brilliant intensity Kissin brings to the Brahms Paganini Variations. Listen to how he parades a dizzying, dazzling series of moods--from caressing introspection and bone-crunching, steely chords to the giddy cross-rhythms of Book II, Variation 7--to match Brahms's magnitude of invention. This is pianism of the first order.--Thomas May