Nocturne in D flat major Op.27 No.2 (Chopin).

The Nocturnes, Op. 27 are a set of two nocturnes for solo piano The pieces were composed in 1836 and published in 1837. Both nocturnes in this opus are dedicated to Countess d'Appony.
The genre title ‘nocturne’ was fairly commonplace in early nineteenth-century piano music, influenced no doubt by the enhanced cultural status of the night (famous texts by Novalis and Madame de Staël), and also by the growing importance of the salon as a site of pianism.
Initially it was applied to a wide diversity of pieces, but in the hands of John Field and Chopin it came to be associated with a pianistic style shaped by vocal imitation, whether of the French romance or the Italian aria. By the time Chopin came to compose his Nocturnes Op.27 the genre was already a well-established one, with the archetype of the ‘nocturne sound’ (ornamental melody supported by widespread arppeggiations) firmly in place.
The Nocturnes of Op 27 broadly conform to this, but they did mark an intriguing change in how Chopin presented this genre to the world. From this point onwards, he published his Nocturnes in contrasted pairs rather than in groups of three, giving greater weight to the individual pieces within an opus but at the same time preserving a sense of their mutual compatibility. Chopin was happy to perform the individual Nocturnes of Op 27 separately (especially the second, which he played in Paris, England and Scotland), but he conceived them as perfectly complementary, with the darkly brooding C sharp minor as the first of the two.
That these were pieces of exceptional artistic quality was immediately recognized when they were published in 1837, not least by Schumann in the pages of Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, where he described them as exemplifying a ‘new wave’ of piano music.
David Dubal feels that the pieces are "more aptly described as ballades in miniature". Blair Johnson states that these two nocturnes are "two of the most powerfuland famous nocturnes Chopin has ever penned" and that these nocturnes are "virtually unrecognizable" to the nocturne tradition of John Field.
The speed indication is Lento sostenuto (very slow and sustained i.e. use pedal) and is in 6/8.
(I use the Henle-Urtext edition which goes back to the original edition, the one copied from the music Chopin originally wrote. This means that the copy is as near to what Chopin intended, possibly plus a few additions which the publisher/editor thought appropriate; however, the publisher may have consulted with Chopin who may have agreed with the additions, if any. This accounts for the strange phrasing at about 3' 13'', where no other performer seems to acknowledge the difference!
In most of Chopin's nocturnes the middle area usually becomes very agitated, excitable, possibly so that the ending has as much contrast before there is a cooling period to end the piece quietly; in this case the area begins at 3' 13''; it ends at 4' 33'' where the leaping motif is replaced by the same idea, but in a much more gentle way).
GlynGlynn, alias GB, realiser.
Please feel free to leave any comments, be they good, bad, or indifferent as to whether the piece, or the performance, moved you in any way whatsoever!
(Since music is an aural art, and not a visual one, it is best to listen to these pieces, and other artists performances, with eyes closed, so as to be able to listen intently as to how the music is portrayed).