Frédéric Chopin - Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 | Jorge Bolet

"The title Nocturne aptly applies to the pieces so named by Field, for it bears our thoughts at the outset toward those hours wherein the soul, released from all the cares of the day, is lost in self-contemplation, and soars toward the regions of a starlit heaven.

We see her hovering on ethereal pinions, like the antique Philomela, over the flowers and perfumes of a nature whereof she is enamoured.

Chopin, in his poetic Nocturnes, sang not only the harmonies which are the source of our most ineffable delights, but likewise the restless, agitating bewilderment to which they oft give rise. His flight is loftier, though his wing be more wounded; and his very suaveness grows heartrending, so thinly does it veil his despairful anguish… Their closer kinship of sorrow than those of Field renders them the more strongly marked; their poetry is more sombre and fascinating; they ravish us more, but are less reposeful; and thus permit us to return with pleasure to those pearly shells that open, far from the tempests and the immensities of Ocean, beside some murmuring spring shaded by the palms of a happy oasis which makes us forget even the existence of the desert."

F. Liszt, 1859
The twenty-one Nocturnes of Frédéric Chopin span virtually his entire creative career. Chopin inherited the form from Irish composer John Field; Field's influence is indeed palpable throughout Chopin's earliest published entries in the genre. The Three Nocturnes, Op.9 (dedicated to the famous pianist Mme. Camille Pleyel, with whom several noted musicians of the day, including Berlioz and Liszt, fell in love) still betray their stylistic debt to Field, although even at this early stage in his development Chopin's melancholic chromaticism and sinewy melodies stand in stark contrast to the Irish composer's far simpler pieces.

The Nocturne is reflective in mood until it suddenly becomes passionate near the end. The new concluding melody begins softly but then ascends to a high register and is played forcefully in octaves, eventually reaching the loudest part of the piece, marked fortissimo. After a trill-like passage, the excitement subsides; the nocturne ends calmly.
"Jorge Bolet is an avowed Romantic, happy to relax once the serious business of his recital is over. Like Moiseiwitsch, he can be mischievously enterprising, challenging his audience to guess the composer of this or that rare poetic jewel or confection - or, like Rubinstein, he can affectionately confirm and recreate their favourites.[...] Chopin expressed his infinite variety in a single medium, happy to confine his realm of Waltzes, Nocturnes and Etudes, etc., exclusively to the piano. The E flat Nocturne from opus 9 is a poised and fervent transmutation of Field's frail examples of the genre, and that in F sharp is a notably rich and exotic instance of "Chopin's "Night Music" - music, according to one commentator, inseparable from champagne and truffles. The so-called 'Minute' Waltz is too subtle and engaging to be reduced to a sporting event (note the delicious decoration Bolet provides for the end), whereasthe Waltz in E minor is a reminder of how Chopin's fire could enliven a supposedly restricted salon form. The Études,too, magically transform workaday notions of technique into the highest poetry, and never more so than in the opening examples of Op. 25. No. 11 from the same opus, however, represents a rude awakening from such balm or gentleness, yet, as Jorge Bolet amply shows, Chopin's brilliantfury is not an empty barrage of virtuosity or an elaborate foretaste of Sousa, but a visionary study in melody and counter-melody."

Bryce Morrison
"Encores in the concert hall were of two types: stunning, to have the natives gasping; relaxing, after a tornado of a concerto. Both worked, in the right hands; but somehow the same situation does not apply on disc today. [...] Most of those chosen by Bolet (presumably) are of the stunning type, in one way or another. [...] The arranging is marvelous, shot through with shafts of sunlight which the originals sometimes only suggest with difficulty, and it is all played with the unfailing wizardry of Bolet. He is also splendidly recorded. It is difficult to see how an encore-fancier could greet this record with anything but the most delighted of, well encores."

Gramophone VII.1987

Frédéric François Chopin - Nocturne for piano Nº 2 in E flat major, Op. 9/2, 1832
Jorge Bolet (November 15, 1914 – October 16, 1990), Encores, London/Decca Records, 1987 .
Recording: St. Barnabas, North Finchley, United Kingdom, 1985

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