The 12 Transcendental Etudes are the ultimate test of quasi-orchestral virtuosity and of the capacity to achieve nobility and true eloquence. Jand� perhaps lacks diabolic...

The 12 Transcendental Etudes are the ultimate test of quasi-orchestral virtuosity and of the capacity to achieve nobility and true eloquence. Jand� perhaps lacks diabolic frisson in the more ferocious numbers but his performances, overall, aren't disfigured by willful, sensational attributes or hysteria. No-1 is an impressive, dramatically pointed, curtain-raiser, and he can hell-raise with assurance in 'Mazeppa'. His 'Feux follets' hardly sparks with the brilliance of, say, some of the full-blooded accounts of certain Russian artists, but even when it hardly modulates from study to tone-poem it's still more than capable (higher praise than you might think where such intricacy is concerned). He flashes an impressive rapier at the start of 'Eroica' and there's plenty of swagger and facility in the so-called 'Appassionata' �tude. 'Chasse-neige', too, proceeds with a fine sense of it's menacing start to a howling, elemental uproar before returning to distant thunder. Jand� is less assured in introspection, yet it has to be said that all-encompassing versions of the Transcendental Etudes are hard to come by. Jand� is impressively recorded.