A comprehensive introduction to a foundational figure of early Romantic music: modern recordings of all the concertos and solo piano music by ‘the father of the nocturne’, the Irish pianist and composer John Field.
Frederic Chopin was only the most celebrated of many pianist-composers to pay warm tribute to the musician who, more than any other, invented the genre which became synonymous with musical Romanticism. His exquisite tone-poetry on the page, as well as the brilliant imagination of his playing, proposed a new way of addressing the piano, and responded to the rapid advance in the instrument’s technology during the first decades of the 19th century.
Where Beethoven had sought to stretch and challenge and conquer the piano, Field drew from it a more intimate style which mirrored the cantabile and legato of Italian singing. Born in Dublin in 1782, Field received his earliest lessons in music from Tommaso Giordani, and then continued his studies in London with another Italian immigrant across the Channel, Muzio Clementi. While Field went on to achieve celebrity as a pianist across Europe before settling in St Petersburg, and dying of alcoholism in 1837, he left a legacy of music for his instrument which gradually fell from prominence.
During the last half century, and the early-music revival’s focus on this pivotal era in music history, Field has been re-assessed. This comprehensive collection presents Field as a major figure of early Romanticism: a witty virtuoso in the concertos, a master of form in the sonatas and nocturnes, and above all a mind which could translate impressions into notes, especially from the natural world.
These recordings were enthusiastically welcomed for their detailed precision and sympathy with Field’s idiom. “The performances and recorded sound here are very fine... a lovely, leisurely listening experience.” (Restani’s cycle of the concertos, reviewed by Fanfare). “Tyler Hay relates to John Field's Nocturnes much as Claudio Arrau did to those of Chopin.” (Classics Today).
