When I noticed the duration of Chopin’s Second Piano Sonata at 28 minutes, I was intrigued. Duration isn’t everything and the stopwatch can sometimes be a treacherous friend, but, when you know the Brailowsky version, which takes 18 minutes, and then the Gilels, which takes about 22, it makes you wonder. 

Anton Rosputko is no Argerich-style wild child: he cleaves more to the aristocratic poise of, say, Jorge Bolet or Claudio Arrau. The opening movement’s second subject in Rosputko’s hands seems to offer more resignation than hope. His Scherzo is a gusty affair partly reminiscent of howling winds, well contrasted with the balm of the trio’s warmer melody. Nevertheless, something’s afoot here. You’ve guessed it: the Funeral March. 

At ten minutes, it initially reminded me of Lang Lang’s disastrous misjudgement of the Largo in his recording of the Third Sonata. There’s still stoic dignity here, unlike Olga Kern’s almost identically timed rendition which I reviewed several years ago, and which the ever-mordant Jed Distler described as merely prostrate grief, almost stasis. At this tempo, the finale, (the...