Frédéric Chopin's Nocturnes are among the most beautiful and popular works of piano music. For his latest album, Canadian pianist extraordinaire Jan Lisiecki has chosen to return to the music of Frédéric Chopin. Following on from Works for Piano & Orchestra (2017) and Chopin: Études (2013), he presents his new recording with Chopin’s complete Nocturnes.

Lisiecki is perhaps most celebrated for his masterfully sensitive and refined interpretative approach. His newest release not only captures the spirit of Chopin’s pianism, but also represents the time and circumstances in which it was made, as the pianist himself explains: “I’m the first to question why we should record something that has been recorded many times before. But music only lives through performance and is different every time we hear it, even when it’s a recording. I think there was something for me to say with this album.”

Frédéric Chopin distilled the essence of song into his Nocturnes, drawing inspiration from the expressive force of Italian opera and the freedom of Polish folk music. And it was through the Nocturnes that Jan Lisiecki first discovered Chopin – he recalls falling in love with Op.9 No.1 as a child and being enchanted by its yearning melody. The piece, the first of twenty-one nocturnes the composer wrote between the late 1820s and 1847, offered a glimpse of a vast universe of emotions, expressions, musical gestures and tonal colours. It also prepared the way for the brilliant student to explore the piano’s lyrical side.

Lisiecki was highly acclaimed for the award-winning Beethoven Lieder album with Matthias Goerne – together with his widely renowned affinity for Chopin – that immersion in the world of song has surely helped inform his new readings of the lyrical, confessional Nocturnes, works he feels are made for intimate listening, arguably best heard and contemplated alone at night. “These remarkable pieces invite you to think and feel whatever you want,” concludes the pianist. “There’s no ‘right’ response to them, other than the one you’re having.”

Tracklist:

CD 1

3 Nocturnes op. 9

1 No. 1 in B flat minor. Larghetto

2 No. 2 in E flat major. Andante

3 No. 3 in B major. Allegretto

3 Nocturnes op. 15

4 No. 1 in F major. Andante cantabile

5 No. 2 in F sharp major. Larghetto

6 No. 3 in G minor. Lento

2 Nocturnes op. 27

7 No. 1 in C sharp minor. Larghetto

8 No. 2 in D flat major. Lento sostenuto

2 Nocturnes op. 32

9 No. 1 in B major. Andante sostenuto

10 No. 2 in A flat major. Lento

2 Nocturnes op. 37

11 No. 1 in G minor. Andante sostenuto

12 No. 2 in G major. Andantino

CD 2

2 Nocturnes op. 48

1 No. 1 in C minor. Lento

2 No. 2 in F sharp minor. Andantino

2 Nocturnes op. 55

3 No. 1 in F minor. Andante

4 No. 2 in E flat major. Lento sostenuto

2 Nocturnes op. 62

5 No. 1 in B major. Andante

6 No. 2 in E major. Lento 

7 Nocturne in E minor op. posth. 72 no. 1

8 Nocturne in C minor KK IVb, 8, op. post.

9 Nocturne in C sharp minor KK IVa, 16, op. post.