Spellbinding Artistry Jonathan Plowright plays Chopin - recommended by HOWARD SMITH '... positively hair-raising.'

Jonathan Plowright's latest disc reminds me of two indisputable facts characterizing piano music and pianists active in the Euro-Asian music tradition of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

First, Chopin's influence rapidly extended from Scandanavia in the north, to Russia on the east, into England facing the Atlantic, and south to Italy and Catalonia. And his hold on musicians' imagination lasted well into the twentieth century.

It was surely inevitable that his body of keyboard works inspired musicians of former Austro-Hungarian territories: the composer's native Poland and the Ukraine.

Pianist/composer Leopold Godowsky upheld the repertoire throughout his peripatetic (global) career and Latin America's Villa-Lobos was a Chopin advocate in his Brazilian homeland...

FRYDERYCK CHOPIN

UNITED KINGDOM

HYPERION

EDVARD GRIEG

ARTHUR HONEGGER

LENNOX BERKELEY

HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS

FEDERICO MOMPOU

THEODOR LESCHETIZKY

PIANO