Chopin: The Complete Waltzes – review

There's no prescribed order for playing the 20 Chopin waltzes that Stephen Hough includes in this delightful, effortlessly stylish collection, and Hough opts to present the eight pieces Chopin sanctioned for publication in his lifetime first, in chronological order, from the E flat major Op 18 to the Waltz in A flat Op 64 No 3, before moving on to the posthumously published ones. As a sequence it works well, allowing Hough to set off his marvellously coloured account of the introspective A minor Waltz Op 34 No 2 with the much more extrovert examples in A flat and F from the same set on either side, for instance. But in fact I suspect that whatever the order chosen, the result would have been equally convincing, for Hough's playing has such authority and panache, its balance between virtuosity and vividly communicated expression so finely judged, that every perfectly scaled moment is as intensely realised as every other. Few other pianists around today play Chopin with as much understanding and poised mastery as this.