A noc­turne is a musi­cal com­po­si­tion intend­ed to be evoca­tive of the night and thus quite wist­ful and dreamy in nature. Although the term goes back a long way in musi­cal his­to­ry, its gen­e­sis as a dis­tinct musi­cal genre didn’t come about until the 19^th cen­tu­ry when Irish com­pos­er John Field wrote sev­er­al pieces under this spe­cif­ic title of “noc­turne”. He in turn heav­i­ly influ­enced one Frédéric Chopin who wrote a per­fect set of 21 noc­turnes that became the roman­tic period’s best-known exem­plar of the form (to the detri­ment of Field’s lega­cy, since Field­’s piano work is prac­ti­cal­ly unheard these days when com­pared to Chopin’s piano reper­toire).

Arguably Chopin’s most famous piece is the sub­ject of today’s blog, his Noc­turne Op. 9 No. 2, writ­ten around 1830 when Chopin was in his ear­ly twen­ties and his cre­ative juices were in full flow. It has been a per­ma­nent fix­ture of the Clas­sic FM Hall of Fame ever since it start­ed in 1996. Its beguil­ing melody haunts from start to fin­ish. As the song pro­gress­es, the main melody is repeat­ed three times, and each time includes more and more orna­men­ta­tion, a clas­sic Chopin tech­nique. It’s played in andante and espress dolce, mean­ing mod­er­ate­ly slow and expres­sive­ly sweet.

Pianists live and die today by their abil­i­ty to tack­le Chopin’s reper­toire of hardy peren­ni­als, and the Noc­turnes are no excep­tion — the list of great pianists that have com­mit­ted their inter­pre­ta­tions to record is exten­sive and includes Arthur Rubin­stein, Vladimir Ashke­nazy, Alfred Cor­tot, and Mau­r­izio Polli­ni. I have cho­sen a record­ing by Pol­ish pianist Arthur Rubin­stein, regard­ed by many as the great­est Chopin inter­preter of his time. He played in pub­lic for eight decades so you can be sure we’re in safe hands. Lis­ten to this mas­ter­piece; it’s pure ten­der­ness.