Chopin Nocturnes

Stephen Hough - Frédéric Chopin: Nocturnes (2021)  Music

Posted by ArlegZ at Feb. 28, 2024
Stephen Hough - Frédéric Chopin: Nocturnes (2021)

Stephen Hough - Frédéric Chopin: Nocturnes (2021)
XLD | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 269 Mb | Total time: 01:51:25 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Hyperion | # CDA68351/2 | Recorded: 2020

Just about everything about Stephen Hough’s Chopin Nocturne cycle seems ideal. His gorgeous and well-recorded sonority seduces in intimate moments, rising to the music’s dramatic climaxes with emotional force yet never losing clarity or luminosity. He applies rubato with the utmost discretion, taste, and proportion, while largely underlining the composer’s harmonic surprises through shifts of tone color and chord balances. The way in which the pianist floats soft cantabile legato lines often gives the illusion of more sustain pedal than is actually employed.

Maurizio Pollini - Frederic Chopin: Nocturnes (2005) 2CDs  Music

Posted by Designol at Oct. 1, 2023
Maurizio Pollini - Frederic Chopin: Nocturnes (2005) 2CDs

Maurizio Pollini - Frédéric Chopin: Nocturnes (2005) 2CDs
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 255 Mb | Scans included | Time: 01:30:31
Genre: Classical | Label: Deutsche Grammophon | # B0005804-02 GH2

Pollini's traversal of Chopin's 19 Nocturnes (he leaves out the pair of posthumous ones) is one of his finest recordings in years. His long-lined yet detailed performances are comparable to the very different ones that have long stood at the pinnacle of recorded sets. Not as serene as Artur Rubinstein's, not as philosophical as Claudio Arrau's, nor as warm as Ivan Moravec's, Pollini's interpretations have their own allure. One is the way he shapes the melodies with a natural flow enhanced by his tonal beauty, less lean and streamlined than his usual way with Romantic music.
Maurizio Pollini - Chopin: Nocturnes, Mazurkas, Berceuse, Sonata, Opp. 55-58 (2019)

Maurizio Pollini - Chopin: Nocturnes, Mazurkas, Berceuse, Sonata, Opp. 55-58 (2019)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 180 Mb | Total time: 53:32 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Deutsche Grammophon | # 483 6475 | Recorded: 2018

Maurizio Pollini, "the pre-eminent Chopinist of his generation" (Fanfare), continues his revelatory and chronological re-exploration of the Polish master's late works. This album contains the pianist's latest thoughts on Opp. 55-58 (1843/4), including the B minor Sonata and Berceuse.
Arthur Rubinstein - Chopin: Nocturnes (1999 Remastered) (1967/1999) (Hi-Res)

Arthur Rubinstein - Chopin: Nocturnes (1999 Remastered) (1967/1999) (Hi-Res)
FLAC (tracks, digital booklet) 24bit-96kHz - 2.09 GB
1:47:56 | Classical | Label: Sony Classical

In August-September 1965 (February 1967 for Op.55 No.2) Rubinstein, then 79 years old, recorded for RCA these 19 Nocturnes here reissued — following Chopin's wishes, Rubinstein never performed or recorded the two unpublished nocturnes that fill out many recorded sets. Between effusion and restraint near-ideally balanced, and in a true, fair and alert tone, Arthur Rubinstein stands apart, in addition to his incomparable rubato, by a spontaneity and youth of heart with which he animates these pieces; bathed in light and colors, they are no longer melancholic only.
Maria Joao Pires - Frederic Chopin: The Nocturnes, Complete Recording (1996) 2CDs

Maria João Pires - Frédéric Chopin: The Nocturnes, Complete Recording (1996) 2CDs
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 344 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 271 Mb | Scans included
Genre: Classical | Label: Deutsche Grammophon | # 477 096-2 | Time: 01:49:11

Passion rather than insouciance is Pires’s keynote. Here is no soft, moonlit option but an intensity and drama that scorn all complacent salon or drawing-room expectations. How she relishes Chopin’s central storms, creating a vivid and spectacular yet unhistrionic contrast with all surrounding serenity or ‘embalmed darkness’. The con fuoco of Op. 15 No. 1 erupts in a fine fury and in the first Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 1, Pires’s sharp observance of Chopin’s appassionato marking comes like a prophecy of the coda’s sudden blaze. Such resolution and psychological awareness make you realize that Chopin, like D. H. Lawrence, may well have thought that “there must be a bit of fear, and a bit of horror in your life”. Chopin, Pires informs us in no uncertain terms, was no sentimentalist.

Nelson Goerner - Chopin: Nocturnes (2017)  Music

Posted by SERTiL at Oct. 6, 2017
Nelson Goerner - Chopin: Nocturnes (2017)

Nelson Goerner - Chopin: Nocturnes
Classical | WEB FLAC (tracks) & d. booklet | 108:01 min | 377 MB
Label: Alpha | Tracks: 21 | Rls.date: 2017

Sophisticated colourist and cerebral virtuoso though he is, Nelson Goerner nevertheless brings out the moments of weakness, the hesitations, the lightning passions in the labyrinth of Chopin’, wrote Diapason on the release of the Preludes in 2015 (Diapason d’Or, Choc de Classica). ‘Serenity’, ‘balance’, ‘clarity’, ‘phrasing’ are the key words that recur in reviews of the discs and concerts of the Argentine pianist, whose fifth solo release on Alpha this is.
Angela Hewitt - Frederic Chopin: The Complete Nocturnes & Impromptus (2004) 2CDs

Angela Hewitt - Frédéric Chopin: The Complete Nocturnes & Impromptus (2004) 2CDs
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 365 Mb | Mp3 (CBR320) ~ 305 Mb | Artwork included
Genre: Classical | Label: Hyperion | # CDA67371/2 | Time: 02:12:53

Angela Hewitt has applied the same intense study to Chopin's Nocturnes and Impromptus as she does to any composer's keyboard works. The result is a set of pieces lovingly played and appreciated, with personally felt emotion. The most outwardly emotional displays, as in the Nocturnes, Op. 15, are never wildly loud and always return to an introverted state afterward. In the Nocturnes she uses little touches of rubato so frequently as to almost stretch the melodies out of shape, as in Op. 9/1, but she plays many of the Nocturnes a tick faster than other pianists so that they stand up to that kind of manipulation better, and she never slows down to fit in ornaments. Her ornaments always fit right into the melody, both in her timing and her phrasing, and are feathery soft.

Natalia Sokolovskaya - Chopin: Nocturnes, Vol. 1 (2022)  Music

Posted by ciklon5 at Sept. 17, 2022
Natalia Sokolovskaya - Chopin: Nocturnes, Vol. 1 (2022)

Natalia Sokolovskaya - Chopin: Nocturnes, Vol. 1 (2022)
FLAC (tracks), Lossless | 1:39:27 | 216 Mb
Genre: Classical / Label: OnClassical

Were we committed to tracing Chopin’s melodic evolution, it is in the nocturnes that we find a possible answer. From the operatic archetypes found in the early Op. 9 to the narcotic orientalism in the first of Op. 62, the last set that Chopin published, bel canto had a fundamental role in shaping the composer’s melodic consciousness. It is often said that it is in the intimate nature of the salon that Chopin’s nocturnes should be placed; it was mostly women who performed them in public in the 19th century, precisely because of their purported feminine qualities. But we also witness devastating outbursts in the middle sections of Op. 9 No. 3, Op. 15 Nos. 1 and 3, or in the operatic climax to which the heart of the Op. 55 No. 1 gives rise.
Nelson Goerner - Chopin Nocturnes (2017) [Official Digital Download 24/88]

Nelson Goerner - Chopin Nocturnes (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88.2 kHz | Time - 108:01 minutes | 1.66 GB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Digital booklet

Sophisticated colourist and cerebral virtuoso though he is, Nelson Goerner nevertheless brings out the moments of weakness, the hesitations, the lightning passions in the labyrinth of Chopin’, wrote Diapason on the release of the Preludes in 2015 (Diapason d’Or, Choc de Classica). ‘Serenity’, ‘balance’, ‘clarity’, ‘phrasing’ are the key words that recur in reviews of the discs and concerts of the Argentine pianist, whose fifth solo release on Alpha this is.
Daniel Barenboim - Frédéric Chopin: The Complete Nocturnes (1997)

Daniel Barenboim - Frédéric Chopin: The Complete Nocturnes (1997)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 273 Mb | Total time: 58:13+56:36 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Deutsche Grammophon | # 453 022-2 | Recorded: 1981

These reflective character pieces are handled with finesse and poetic expression by Barenboim, who usually plays such subtle Romantic music with great restraint, thoughtfulness, and refinement, and seldom lets its passions get away from his control. To the extent that Barenboim plays with a delicate touch and Deutsche Grammophon's wide audio range allows for many nuances, there may be some concern whether the volume of the recording will need adjustment because a soft level makes the piano seem too faint, while a recommended middle setting yields a more credible presence.