Hay Hose Fest

A groundbreaking collection of studies by one of the 19th century’s leading keyboard lions. By the early 1830s, the celebrated virtuoso Friedrich Wilhelm Michael Kalkbrenner was at the height of his pianistic powers. It was at this time that Chopin moved to Paris and found Kalkbrenner to be the finest pianist he had heard: ‘Herz, Liszt and Hiller are all zeros next to Kalkbrenner.’

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'.