It was a bold move on RCA's part to start their William Kapell collection with a disc of Chopin mazurkas. Kapell was a notoriously fastidious artist who spent hours and hours and hours perfecting every detail of his interpretations of core repertoire. But not, apparently, the Chopin mazurkas. The story is that he more or less tossed off his performances of the mazurkas, that he would sit down and sight-read through them with nonchalant sangfroid. Of course, any third-year piano student could sight-read through most of the Chopin mazurkas: to look at them on paper, they are simple, straightforward Polish dances. But to play them is to go deep into Chopin's poetic Polish heart, a place of warm love and chilly loneliness, of giddy exhilaration and gloomy despair. And these are things that cannot be tossed off. Nor does Kapell toss them off. His interpretations are very free rhythmically; one rarely gets the sense from Kapell's subtle tempo rubato of the pieces being in strict triple time, but rather of a fluid and fluent mix of duple and triple time. This rhythmic freedom allows Kapell's mazurkas to sing as well as dance. Rarely does one hear such depths from the mazurkas: Kapell's interpretations of the A minor melancholy of Op. 67, No. 4; of the A minor lyricism of Op. 59, No. 1; and especially of the A minor suicidal desperation of Op. 17, No. 4, are deeply affecting. Nor are Kapell's interpretations all sorrowful: his D flat major Op. 30, No. 3, is a tender charmer; his A flat major Op. 50, No. 2, is lissomely seductive; and his F major Op. 68, No. 3, is a sweetly wistful, delicately lilting central section. These are masterful and moving performances.