David Wilde lives up to his name. The octogenarian pianist does not do glossy or pretty – instead, this final volume of his Chopin series is a full-on blast of volatile extroversion. Wilde’s piano twangs and growls; rubato comes in enormous swells; chordal passages are delivered with craggy, uncompromising attack. And yet the disc opens with startling solemnity in the staggeringly slow and weighty Nocturne in C minor, Op 48 No 1.
Four waltzes yank in and out of bittersweetness and bravado: the Minute Waltz bullish, the A-minor Op 34 No 2 arrestingly lyrical. The Scherzo No 2 is monumentally untamed while a pair of Mazurkas and a trio of Écossaises are spiky and playful. This rollercoaster album won’t seduce everyone and not all of it worked for me, but at best Wilde’s performances are generous, uninhibited and personal, as though he couldn’t care less about the microphone and is playing no-holds-barred for himself.
