Chopin bicentennial brings a wide harvest of recordings

Never has a composer's anniversary been celebrated so widely but with so little new repertoire to discover.

Frederic Chopin, arguably the piano's greatest lyric poet, the man who forever changed what it can do and say, is enjoying an avalanche of discs and downloads in his 200th-birthday year as pianists take his never-out-of-style pieces for a spin. Some return in glory, others not so much.

For all its meticulous craftsmanship, improvisational inspiration and matchless charm, Chopin's music asks - but never demands - a degree of self-revelation not all performers are willing (or able) to give. His pieces are soliloquies, invariably written for solo piano, aside from a few concertos, a piano trio, and a cello sonata. Had Chopin a report card, it would read, "Does not play well - if at all - with others."

Any interventionist collaboration goes badly, whether from jazz players, transcribers wanting to add heft, or just those desiring to spruce up the orchestrations of the concertos: It all comes out sounding cluttered, wrong and strangely exhibitionistic.

Unlike his near-contemporary Franz Liszt, Chopin has a distilled directness that circumvents romantic posturing or playing to the gallery. He was a performer, but in salons. A few years before his 1849 death, he returned to the public concert hall but reportedly could barely be heard. Is that any surprise for a performer/composer used to communicating with friends rather than strangers?

For modern performers, the music acts like a Rorschach inkblot test. Some pianists just can't get past the idea that some of the music's most important elements aren't on the page, from stylish irregularities of tempo to the ethnic lilt of the mazurkas. Too much of either reduces the music to caricature, though most often it suffocates from having too little. It's not unusual for major pianists to avoid Chopin over a long career, as did Rudolf Serkin - in contrast to his son, Peter, whose distinctive Chopin is like eavesdropping on psychotherapy.