Piano Nocturnes

Chronique

It's not so unusual to find recordings of music by John Field, the Irish composer who invented the nocturne, either with Field's nocturnes by themselves or paired with those of Chopin. Irish pianist David Quigley accomplishes the latter effectively on this Avie release, framing the program with pairs that suggest the influence of Field, whom Chopin met in the early 1830s. Field's Nocturne No. 5 deserves a bit better than it gets from the annotation here; of course it does not match Chopin in harmonic depth, but Field's way of thinking about texture in a new kind of work that was not precisely either genre composition nor character piece, was unique, and Chopin plainly studied it closely The really distinctive feature of Quigley's album is that most of it is not devoted to Field and Chopin at all. Instead, he offers a survey of the nocturne as it developed and persisted into the 20th century. A couple of Irish composers, perhaps following Field's example, are included, and there are some little-known pieces that catch the attention and are sympathetically performed. The "Notturno" of Ottorino Respighi, hardly known for piano music, sounds about like what you might expect from the composer of The Pines of Rome if his sound were reduced to keyboard dimensions. But the little-heard Notturno, Op. 6, No. 2, of Clara Schumann is positively haunting and yields nothing to Chopin or Robert Schumann in harmonic terms. Recommended for any lover of Romantic piano music.

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