John Field (1782-1837)
Nocturne n° 1 en mi bémol majeur, H 24
Nocturne n° 2 en do mineur, H 25
Nocturne n° 3 en la bémol majeur, H 26
Nocturne n° 4 en la majeur, H 36
Nocturne n° 5 en si bémol majeur, H 37
Nocturne n° 6 en fa majeur, H 40
Nocturne n° 7 en do majeur, H 45
Nocturne n° 8 en la majeur, H 14E
Nocturne n° 9 en la bémol majeur, H 30A
Nocturne n° 10 en mi mineur, H 46
Nocturne n° 11 en mi bémol majeur, H 56
Nocturne n° 12 en sol majeur, H 58D
Nocturne n° 13 en ré mineur, H 59
Nocturne n° 14 en do majeur, H 60
Nocturne n° 15 en do majeur, H 61
Nocturne n° 16 en fa majeur, H 62
Nocturne n° 17 en mi majeur, H 54
Nocturne n° 18 en mi majeur, H 13K "Midi"

Tyler Hay, piano

As the pre-eminent forerunners to Chopin’s works in the same genres, the Nocturnes of John Field have few rivals for music well known by history but so seldom heard. They were largely inspired by the slow movements of Classical concertos, Mozart above all, as well as opera arias. From them, Field evolved his own firm concept of a form with rich harmonies and gentle dynamics to suggest the night and dreaming, though in fact he began by giving these pieces traditional names such as Pastorale, Serenade and "Romance. He wrote the 18 works not as a set, but over the course of 15 years, rarely completing more than one and never more than three in a single year. Liszt observed in them ‘The total absence of everything that looks to effect'. Even when he settled upon Nocturne, Field bestowed upon some of them a qualifying subtitle: ‘Cradle Song’ (No.6), ‘Reverie’ (No.7), ‘Song Without Words’ (No.13), ’Nocturne Pastorale’ (No.17), and ‘Nocturne charactéristique Midi’ (No.18). This last Nocturne stands apart from its companions as a tribute to midday, cast as an Allegro, with a coda in which a chiming clock strikes twelve as quicker notes laugh and dance around the repeated note. As a window on the salons of 19th century Europe, the Nocturnes are taxing neither to play nor to listen to, but they are polished with painstaking finesse, and they demand from the performer all the subtle pianistic guile of Chopin’s works: notably a command of rubato to shape the melodies, and the imaginative and technical capacities of a coloristic palette to bring variety without eccentricity to the sequence.