Etude Op.10 No.9 -- Chopin

[escort]

Aright, I posted this earlier this year a couple weeks after I started it.  Anyway, here is an updated recording, as it's one of the pieces I have to play for my juries here this coming week.  I guess it still has a lot of room for improvement...  but it is a good bit better than where it was at the time of the last recording. 
Comments/criticisms are very welcome. 

[pianistimo]

Wow.  You're playing some good stuff.  I think this can be taken more 'at ease' in some places and more 'frenzied' in others.  I like to hear the beginning more 'at ease' and work into the 'frenzy.'  This is, of course, just a personal opinion - and Chopin is always very subjective (within the boundaries of Chopin's own markings).

I'd like to hear the beginning with slightly softer 'loudest' dynamics as it seems to be the basis for a kind of 'accompaniment.'  A sort of 'nocturne' effect - that lulls the listener for a bit - and then surprises them with a sort of cynical turn of simultaneous attraction and distraction from what is happening. 

To me, this piece is much like the moonlight sonata.  Equal portions of this mysterious magnetic attraction (pull) and also de-magnetic (pulling away) - so one feels at the end almost where they were at the beginning excepting having gone through a very mysterious experience.   Maybe de-magnetized.

[escort]

Agreed, I think 90% of the things I've worked on with this piece are the dynamics and phrasing in the first section, and then where it returns later on in the piece, and I'm always a bit uneasy with it (even though it is the easiest part of the piece, based on technique).   

I like how you use 'frenzied' and 'at ease' as descriptions.  Most of the  critiques I have received on this piece were that it needed more 'dynamic contrast' (which isn't wrong, it still does, it just needs to be applied correctly), yet really, just exaggerating the markings on the page doesn't really cover the whole problem, and in some sections (like you mention in the beginning) could possibly make the problem worse by taking away the unique feel that each section has.  I think those descriptive words do a better job at illustrating where you could use such contrast.  I also like your comparison of this piece to the moonlight sonata; I think that's a good comparison.