Idil Biret - Chopin: Nocturnes (Selection) [CD]

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Fryderyk Chopin(1810-1849) Nocturnes (Selections)The son of a French emigre of relatively humble origin, who hadestablished himself as a schoolmaster in Warsaw and espoused the cause ofPoland with enthusiasm, Fryderyk Chopin was to make his home and career inParis, after early success at home, where he was trained at the Conservatoryand gave a series of public concerts before trying his luck in Vienna. Paris,however, proved more suitable for his particular talents. As a pianist heexcelled in a peculiar delicacy of nuance, while as a teacher and as agentleman he proved acceptable in the elegant salons of the French capital.For some ten years Chopin enjoyed or occasionally suffered arelationship with the strong-willed blue-stocking Aurore Dudevant, better knownby her pen-name of George Sand, a woman of a distinctly liberated cast of mind,who was to find even in her inamorato a source for her own fiction. Chopin wasto die of tuberculosis, from which he had long suffered, at the early age of 39.Among forms that Chopin made his own was the Nocturne, at onetime synonymous with the Serenade, but with the Irish pianist John Fieldand Chopin, his successor, a lyrical piano piece offering, nominally at least,a poetic vision of the night. Field wrote eighteen piano pieces with this titlebetween the years 1814 and 1835 and these introduced a new form of piano musicthat was developed not only in the Nocturne but in other separatemovements for piano throughout the century.The three nocturnes that make up Opus 9 were written either duringChopin's final period in Warsaw or during his first months abroad. They werepublished in Paris in 1833, with a dedication to Thomas De Quincey's'celestial pianofortist' Marie Moke, once engaged to Berlioz, butfrom 1831 until their separation four years later, the wife of thepiano-manufacturer Camille Pleyel, in whose Salle Pleyel Chopin gave his firstpublic concert in Paris. The B flat minor Nocturne, Opus 9, No. 1, withits more embellished melodic line and passionate central section is followed bythe familiar E flat Nocturne and a third of rather more energeticcharacter in B major.The three Nocturnes of Opus 15 were published by MauriceSchlesinger in 1834 with a dedication to Ferdinand Hiller, who had impressedChopin as a boy with great talent. Hiller was a pupil of Hummel and a closefriend of Mendelssohn. The first of the set, in F major, has a passionate Fminor central section, followed by an F sharp major Nocturne of greatercomplexity and a gentler G minor Nocturne, marked Lento, languido erubato.Schlesinger, a somewhat unprincipled publisher, satirised by Flaubert,who was in love with Schlesinger's wife, published the Opus 27 Nocturnes in1836, with a dedication to Countess Apponyi, wife of the Austrian ambassador inParis, who brought Johann Strauss to Paris in the same year. Chopin haddeplored the tastes of Vienna and the dominance of Strauss and Lanner, bothenjoying, to his expressed surprise, the title of Kapellmeister. T

No.1 in b flat, Op.9, No.1

No.2 in E Flat, Op.9, No.2

No.3 in B, Op.9, No.3

No.4 in F, Op.15, No.1

No.5 in F#, Op.15, No.2

No.7 in c#, Op.27, No.1

No.8 in D Flat, Op.27, No.2

No.9 in B, Op.32, No.1

No.13 in c, Op.48, No.1

No.15 in f, Op.55, No.1

No.16 in E Flat, Op.55, No.2

No.17 in B, Op.62, No.1

No.19 in e, Op.72, No.1

No.20 in c#, B.I.49