Field

Following her critically acclaimed coupling of the Britten & Barber Piano Concertos with the London Symphony Orchestra, Elizabeth Joy Roe enlightens the extraordinary world of John Field. Field, an Irish composer, is regarded as the "Father of the Nocturne" who predates Chopin. This release is the first recording of all 18 Nocturnes on a single album.

The Nocturne is a romantic piano piece in which a nocturnal, romantic atmosphere is expressed, where perfumed melodies float serenely over a calmly murmuring accompaniment.-Credit where credit is due: the inventor of the genre is the Irish composer John Field, who made fame as a pianist of his own works. It needed the genius of Chopin to perfect the genre to the highest artistic level: Chopin's Nocturnes are the archetypes of romantic piano music, and count among his best loved works.

This is the best version I have come across. John Field is a forgotten composer who deserves to be listened to. He was the first to exploit the full tonal qualities of the pianoforte and introduced European "classical" music to Russia. He taught Glinka and is regarded by some as the father of Russian music.

A wonderful idea brilliantly executed, Bart van Oort's four-disc set entitled The Art of the Nocturne is not only an in-depth examination of one of the most romantic of romantic musical forms, but also a really sexy set of seduction discs that cannot fail to warm even the coldest heart. The first disc in Oort's survey includes all the elegantly expressive Nocturnes of Irish-Russian composer John Field, the second and third discs include all the supremely sensual Nocturnes of Polish-French composer Frédéric Chopin, and the fourth disc includes individual Nocturnes by various contemporaries of Chopin, of whom the best known are Clara Schumann and Charles-Valentin Alkan and the least known is Ignacy Feliks Dobrzynski.

This is the second, and perhaps more aggressively experimental, installment in the Bang on Can All-Stars’ acclaimed commissioned composer series. Like its predecessor, More Field Recordings once again explores strange new terrain where found sound, samples and archival audio collide with contemporary classical music, written by a wide range of artists and performed by the All-Stars.