Chopin: Nocturnes

Advantages: beautiful piano pieces.
Disadvantages: are you kidding...none!

I play the piano freqeuntly. As a result i come across many composers. Of them all, chopin is my favourite. With his singing melodie, and wonderous chromatic passages he is easily the greatest composer, poetically. Chopin's nocturnes are among the most popular of his works, and this style is most famous for Chopin, even thought it was originally created by an Irish compose named John Field. The 3 nocturnes that make up Op.9 were written in 1830-1831 ...
...These 3 pieces were dedicated to Camile Moke Pleyel, a very tallented pianist and wife of one of France's most famous piano manufactures. Op.9 No.1 is currently the most performed of all his nocturnes. Op.15 was written at about the same time as Op.9 except for Op.15 No.3. This was written in 1833. This Opus was dedicated to the German pianist Ferdinand Hiller. Op.27 only contains 2 nocturnes, both written in 1835 and published the following year. ... Read review

Advantages: Sheer luxury of tone and sonority
Disadvantages: Can we ever have enough time for such diversity?!

...Chopin from a female hand! I'd say, if you want just one set of these nocturnes you'll do no better than shop here with this lovely lady! There are so many ways to interpret Chopin no one pianist will ever get him wired 100% but here is a very good offering from Deutsche. I previously had a set by Ashkenazy and I way prefer this: less of the thundering concert pianist and more the subtlety of a chamber recital which for me is the style Chopin himself aspired to: he constantly shunned the concert platform and was best at home in Parisian salons. Still some thunder and lightning here, tho'! Probe Chopin's inner soul in his most enigmatic, restless, vital, original, diverse dynamic set of works for solo piano. Super for the student: listen before you learn, and sublime for the classical connoisseur, I think secretly even... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Amazing pianistic performances
Disadvantages: I can't play like that

...a very popular form at this time, Chopin really having bought the idea of a nocturne into being, This one is not really what I would have expected from the title, and Chopins nocturnes would have been more of a top melody than this one which interchanges between the players regularly. It does have a cloud like feel to it, but on a fairly windy day. 2. Fêtes (festivals) - this one definitely has the frenzied feeling of a community festival, and makes absolutely full use of the range of the piano, which is quite substantial. 3. The third to this work is called Sirènes, but due to the necessity of female voices on it, it is not included on the album. 6 Epigraphes antiques 1. Pour invoquer Pan, dieu du vent d'été - To call for Pan, the God of the Summer wind - now as you can imagine to call a god of wind, you need an incredibly sensitive... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: A discovery unforgettable
Disadvantages: Nothing

...simple and very difficult in the same time. I try to do it: 1) He make a full immersion in historycal background of Chopin; 2) He loved to study hand-written Chopin's music; 3) Like he said, he stopped to learn a work when "sounds flow in my blood". 4) An intelligent control by means of mind and heart. He plays Chopin's Nocturnes suspended in "time": night is not only darkness, mystery or passions; night in Chopin is without time also... This Arturo understood and now we can hear a strange dimension of time. Of course, there are passions, loves, cryes but these are nothing...in front of a world without time. Often Nocturnes seem lullabyes: it is true! But they send to sleep the death not the listeners! Then, these musics are a victory on the death! Other pianists have played these Chopin's works: Horowitz... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful