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14260-2printed in germany on recycled paper

produced by ulrich krausbo

ris

elda

gsen

Seite 28

fryderyk chopinthe complete nocturnesroger woodward

celestial harmonies

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First page of the autograph ofNocturne Opus 48 No. 2

(c.f. disk 2, track 4)

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Disk 1

Fryderyk Chopin (1810 - 1849) Trois Nocturnes Opus 9 (1832)

1 B flat minor 6‘07“ 2 E flat major 6‘15“ 3 B major 6‘34“

Trois Nocturnes Opus 15 (1833)

4 F major 5‘07“ 5 F sharp major 3‘44“ 6 G minor 5‘56“

Deux Nocturnes Opus 27 (1836)

7 C sharp minor 5‘30“ 8 D flat major 6‘29“

Deux Nocturnes Opus 32 (1837)

9 B major 5‘49“10 A flat major 5‘59“

Total time 58‘17“

Roger Woodward, piano

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Disk 2

Fry dery k Chopin (1810 - 1849) Deux Nocturnes Opus 37 (1840) 1 G minor 7‘32“ 2 G major 7‘09“

Deux Nocturnes Opus 48 (1841) 3 C minor 6‘27“ 4 F sharp minor 7‘37“

Deux Nocturnes Opus 55 (1844) 5 F minor 5‘07“ 6 E flat major 5‘14“

Deux Nocturnes Opus 62 (1846) 7 B major 8‘41“ 8 E major 6‘15“

9 Nocturne Opus post. E minor 4‘01“

10 Lento con gran espressione [Nocturne] Opus post. C sharp minor 4‘08“

11 Nocturne Opus post. C minor 2‘49“

Total time 65‘55“

Roger Woodward, piano

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Produced by Ulrich KrausExecutive Producer: Eckart Rahn

Recorded January 2006 atTonstudio Ulrich Kraus(Wörthsee, Bavaria)Edited and mastered by Ulrich Kraus

Hamburg Steinway D (1985, ivory keys)Tuner: Wolfgang Vornehm

Color photography: Boris EldagsenBack & white photography: Susanne Hölzel

Graphic design: Eckart Rahn

Notes by John Schaefer(based on conversations with Roger Woodward)

With gratitude to Michael Askill and Trish Ludgate

P 2006Celestial HarmoniesP.O. Box 30122Tucson, Arizona 85850

[email protected]

C hopin is able to reveal the poetry that lives in his soul; he is a poet of sound and nothing equals the

pleasure he provides when he sits at the piano and improvises. He is then neither Pole, nor Frenchman, nor German—he betrays an entirely higher origin: one perceives then that he comes from the land of Mozart, Raphael, Goethe. His true homeland is the dream realm of Poetry.

Heinrich Heine, Über die französische Bühne, tenth letter, 1837

The Nocturnes of Fryderyk Chopin do not require a raison d’etre beyond the music itself — this is, after all, music that inhabits a subtly charged, twilit atmosphere, and offers the promise of continual discoveries to the listener. And yet there is an additional reason to consider the Nocturnes as a body of work: they chart the trajectory of the Franco-Polish composer’s career. In this respect, they can be compared to the string quartets of Beethoven. The early quartets display a mastery of a still-new form; the

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Producer/Recording Engineer Ulrich Kraus and Roger Woodward outside the recording studio in Wörthsee, Bavaria, near Munich, in January 2006

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Autograph of theNocturne Opus 48 No. 1 with Chopin‘s

dedication (cf. disk 2, track 3)

middle quartets transcend the previously accepted rules of the form; and the final quartets offer a fully realized display of the composer’s vision, and still have the power to surprise and puzzle almost 200 years later. Substitute “nocturne” for “quartet” and you have described the arc of Chopin’s all-too-brief career. The eighteen Nocturnes that Chopin published during his lifetime cover a period of fourteen years, an apparently short time span but one that encompasses most of the composer’s adult life. The Trois Nocturnes, Opus 9 were published in 1832, the year after Chopin’s move to Paris and the beginning of his public work as a composer and pianist. Deux Nocturnes, Opus 62 were published in 1846, just three years before his death. Add an early Nocturne composed in Warsaw and two more posthumously published works, and the complete set shows a composer taking a nascent form of music, perfecting it, and then distilling into it some of his deepest and most inspired musical thoughts. Chopin’s Nocturnes have proven

irresistible to pianists over the years. “The wonderful thing about a truly great work of art,” according to pianist Roger Woodward, “is that you can come back and discover, or rediscover, all the beautiful moments and hidden meanings”. He points to the music of Bach – expanded to fill the 20th century orchestra by Stokowski, wrestled back into an 18th-century sound world by the period instrument movement, synthesized by Wendy Carlos, and arranged for hundreds of curious and eccentric contemporary ensembles. “We’ve ‘rediscovered’ Bach two or three times in my lifetime,” he says. The Chopin Nocturnes have a similar capacity for rediscovery – despite being almost inevitably tied to the piano. “No matter how often you read the score or play the pieces, they will always be different,” Woodward believes. “Then you listen to someone else play the same music and it’s like another piece altogether”. This may explain why the legendary Arthur Rubinstein recorded the Nocturnes no fewer than three times. And while Rubinstein represents what Woodward

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calls “the most classical and pure” reading of these pieces, he is by no means the last word on the subject. Later recordings by Ivan Moravec and Maria João Pires, very different in character, have their following; and the list of other notable interpreters of these pieces includes Alfred Cortot, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Claudio Arrau. While adding yet another name to this elite roster might seem a daunting task, Roger Woodward is particularly well suited to it – despite his well-earned reputation as

a champion of contemporary composers. A thoughtful and intense pianist, Woodward has spent much of his lifetime studying Chopin. (“It takes that long,” he says simply.) And the Nocturnes, he claims, are “the key to Chopin. They represent the high art of Romanticism, and a great way to begin to understand how to play melody well. I studied them early and they were a guiding force for everything that came later.” He calls Rubinstein’s early recording of the Nocturnes a “defining moment,” and upon Rubinstein’s death in 1982 played Chopin’s complete piano works as a memorial tribute. Australian born and raised, Woodward studied piano with Alexander Sverjansky, a pupil of Rachmaninoff whose approach might charitably be called “old-school.” Woodward recalls being told to prepare a Chopin Etude for class; “I foolishly asked, which one? And he replied, well, I’ll choose it when the time comes. I had two weeks to prepare all of the Etudes.” The young Woodward’s gifts soon became apparent and he was offered a scholarship to study at the National Chopin

Roger Woodward during the recording in January 2006

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Academy in Warsaw. There he met the great pianist Sviatoslav Richter, who would champion the young Australian in Richter’s native Russia. A spell with Pierre Boulez in London in the 1970s introduced Woodward to the European avant-garde, and since then he has become a leading performer of the music of composers as diverse as Morton Feldman, Hans Otte, Luciano Berio, Frank Zappa and Arvo Pärt. Thus he brings the contemporary musician’s sense of discovery and exploration to this music that, while over 150 years old, still has secrets to reveal. As Woodward puts it, “Chopin asks questions; he does not necessarily give answers.” One might also say that Chopin provides multiple answers. A pianist encountering the Nocturnes faces an unexpectedly important decision: which edition to use? In this recording, Roger Woodward has chosen to work mainly from the Jan Ekier edition (Wiener Urtext), although he has also used the Cortot edition and facsimiles of the autograph manuscripts on a couple of occasions. “Chopin left many

editions,” the pianist explains, “because when he was teaching he was constantly correcting as he thought of better ideas.” A fine improviser, Chopin apparently found it difficult to interrupt the flow of ideas at the keyboard in order to write everything down. The result is competing versions of many of his piano works, but especially the Nocturnes. Woodward acknowledges looking at six different editions before deciding on his approach for this recording. For such a melodic, uncomplicated group of works, the Chopin Nocturnes have proven themselves capable of generating a surprising amount of argument. The choice of performing edition is a personal one, and arguments about it can be effectively ended simply by saying so. The number of Nocturnes is also open to debate. Almost all “complete” recordings include the early Nocturne in Em, Opus post., but many do not include the two later, posthumously-published works. The authenticity of these pieces was considered doubtful for many years, although now they are accepted as genuine. But the posthumous Nocturne

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in C#m is actually published as Lento con gran espressione – “Nocturne” is added parenthetically. Is it a Nocturne? Roger Woodward includes it here. Yet he also suggests that the Barcarolle in F#, Opus 60, and the Berceuse in Db, Opus 57, are both Nocturnes, in all but name. And evidence suggests that at least in the latter case, Chopin might have agreed. An 1848 program from a concert at England’s Manchester Concert Hall lists “Monsieur Chopin” performing a “Nocturne et Berceuse.” Certainly, the Barcarolle and the Berceuse have a nocturnal quality to them; nevertheless, these two additional works are not here, and the explanation may well lie in how we define the term. The musical form known as the Nocturne is generally credited to the Irish-born, but largely Russian-based composer and pianist, John Field (1782-1837). Working at a time when the piano itself was still a new instrument, Field created a form of music that was not concerned with technical prowess, thematic development, acoustic power, or any of the usual formal

elements of early 19th century piano music. Instead, Field sought to evoke a mood, an emotion, and a sense of song - a “song without words,” although it would be left to Felix Mendelssohn to actually use that phrase in his famous development of Field’s idea. Chopin, though, clearly heard and appreciated the singing line, what Woodward calls “the sacred cantilena,” in Field’s work. The content of Chopin’s Nocturnes would evolve during his career, but the structure remains relatively constant, and deceptively simple: the left hand provides the rhythm and the harmonies, while the right hand has the cantilena. Or put another way, the right hand sings. And it is here that we come to the thorniest issue facing the pianist: the question of performance practice. What distinguishes Chopin’s Nocturnes, and much of his piano music, is his use of rubato, or “robbed” time. Rubato is derived from the singing nature of the right hand melody; Roger Woodward surmises that Chopin inherited his ideas about rubato from Mozart and Bach. The

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some of the Nocturnes earlier in his career, Woodward now finds that he performs them in a very different way. “I feel a lot closer to them now,” he says. “It’s that peeling back the layers of the onion that pianists go through when they’re trying to penetrate the meaning of a piece.” As veteran producer Ulrich Kraus said after recording Woodward’s Nocturnes, “In each note he plays, you can hear how much thought he had given it.” As for Woodward himself, he says, “somehow I’m not playing them anymore. They’re now playing me.”

John SchaeferNew Sounds

WNYC-FM, New York CityMay 2006

On the following three pages:Autograph of

Nocturne Opus 55 No. 1(c.f. disk 2, track 5)

First page of the autograph ofNocturne Opus 62 No. 1

(c.f. disk 2, track 7)

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beautiful, serpentine melody of the Nocturne in Db, Opus 27 No.2, for example, has the same singing quality as an aria from a Bach cantata. Chopin, who was familiar with the vocal works of Bellini as well as Mozart and Bach, drew inspiration from the way singers would routinely sing slightly before or after the accompanying notes to heighten the emotional effect. In Chopin’s piano music, generally, the left hand plays in strict tempo, but the right hand is at liberty to move more expressively with its melody, though as Woodward notes, “protecting the cantilena is paramount.” Too much rubato, or rubato used too liberally, will distort and perhaps destroy the flow of the melodic line. Over the years, the use – or some might say abuse – of rubato has proven to be a controversial topic. “Playing the cantilena note in the right hand before the harmony note in the left hand,” Woodward says, “can be considered a kind of affectation. But there was a time in Cortot’s day when if you didn’t play like that, you were considered a heartless barbarian, brutalizing Chopin. So

the aesthetics have changed. But the notes remain.” What remains as well is the enduring popular image of Fryderyk Chopin as a fragile, consumptive purveyor of effete parlor works. “People tend to confuse his ill health with his visions,” Woodward offers. “It’s obviously vocally-inspired music in the tradition of Bellini, Mozart, and Bach. But we have numerous examples of Chopin wanting his music played ‘as loud as possible’, for example in the coda of the Ballade in Gm, Opus 23, or the Etude in Cm, Opus 25 No.12. There are references to reaching for the extremes in some of Chopin’s music.” But the Nocturnes, with their dreamy soundscapes and simple textures, run the risk of confirming the stereotyped image of Chopin. “It’s true that ‘nocturne’ means ‘of the night’,” he observes, “but it means ‘of the soul’ as well. These are love poems and dreams. They are the quintessential heartbeat of Chopin. At the same time, though, you have to avoid being overly delicate. It’s the same thing with Mozart — we went through a period, for

expands to three interwoven lines. This piece, according to Roger Woodward, and the two that would follow in the Opus 62, “look to the experimental procedures of the late masterpieces – the fourth Ballade, the fourth Scherzo, and the Cello Sonata.” Deux Nocturnes, Opus 62. By the time this set was published in 1846, Chopin had bent and twisted the Nocturne form to the point where his full improvisatory and experimental impulses could be accommodated. These are, according to Roger Woodward, the most interesting of all the Nocturnes, both from a technical standpoint (“unusual rhythmic features like dotted eighth notes with sixteenth notes on the last part of the triplet”) and from a harmonic one, as multiple melodic lines weave together to form exotic, sometimes almost jazzy harmonies. The magic of these late works is how they maintain the poetic nature of the Nocturne even as they indulge in contrapuntal exercises of surprising complexity. Of the three posthumously published Nocturnes, the Nocturne in E minor is the

earliest, dating from 1827 and showing the predictable influence of John Field. The piece is often seen with the somewhat misleading Opus 72 appended to it, but this is definitely not a later work. The Lento con gran espressione in C# minor is now also considered an early work, and was dedicated to Chopin’s sister. But the Nocturne in C minor, Opus post., long considered to be an early piece as well, has now been recognized as Chopin’s last Nocturne. “It was written in the style of the earlier, Classical period,” Woodward explains, “where everything is subservient to the cantilena – you don’t find the counterpoint of the later, experimental pieces. But there are lots of little subtleties that give the game away, and even though it’s short – just two pages long – it’s now clear that it belongs to 1847.” The Chopin Nocturnes illustrate the progress of a long-dead composer’s career. That may seem a fairly academic exercise. But for a lifelong performer of the Nocturnes like Roger Woodward, returning to the Nocturnes can be a personally illuminating experience. Having recorded

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earlier work, Chopin weaves in a chorale passage drawn from the sacred music tradition. The second Nocturne in this set, in G major, is a study in contrasts. A dance-like idea alternates with gentle, lulling passages, but without literally returning to earlier material. With its surprisingly complex harmonies and its curious semi-formal construction, it’s easy to hear Chopin the veteran improvisor in this work. Deux Nocturnes, Opus 48. Published in 1841, this set includes the Nocturne in F#

minor, Opus 48 No.2 – perhaps the unluckiest of the Nocturnes. A serene and poetic work, it has much to offer … but it resides in the considerable shadow of its partner, the Nocturne in C minor, Opus 48 No.1. This epic work again incorporates religious/chorale elements, and with its heaven-storming octaves and its agitated central section, scarcely seems to be a Nocturne at all. But for all its sound and fury, this unusual middle section is still, as Roger Woodward terms it, “a very profound and very beautiful moment.” Deux Nocturnes, Opus 55. Composed in 1844, these works are again a study in contrast. The first of these two Nocturnes is an elegant piece that probably would not have taxed any of the salon audiences who’d become familiar with Chopin’s earlier work. The second, though, is a composition that would probably have surprised those amateur pianists who rushed out to buy the new opus intending to play these pieces themselves. The Nocturne in Eb, Opus 55 No.2 has the character of a duet, perhaps evoking the love songs of the day – but at times, it

Roger Woodward during the recording in January 2006

a long time, of hearing Mozart played to the invisible wagging finger of a teacher who wanted it to sound like Dresden china. It became unbearable.” While Chopin’s health was questionable (he suffered from tuberculosis), his prowess at the keyboard was not. The larger works, including the Sonatas and Concertos, contain plenty of evidence that Chopin was truly what the pianist Leon Fleischer has called a “small-muscle athlete.” By and large, the Nocturnes were not about virtuosity or display, but on occasion one can hear the pianist of the concert hall bursting through the confines of the salon. In the Nocturne in F, Opus 15 No.1, and later in the Nocturne in Cm, Opus 48 No.1, the middle sections become increasingly turbulent. Roger Woodward points out, though, that “while there are storms and eruptions, in general the Nocturnes have a magnificent serenity.” There is also a fluid, improvisatory quality to many of these pieces. That is certainly no accident: musicologists have long noted that John Field’s piano

sonatas and concertos sometimes lack a slow movement, suggesting that his Nocturnes may have begun as slow, nocturnal improvisations in his concert performances. Given Chopin’s improvising skills, and the many competing editions of his works, it is reasonable to conclude that his Nocturnes were probably improvised and then revised and reshaped through performances. At times, this leads to some remarkably “modernist” effects. One notable example is the popular Nocturne in E-flat, Opus 9 No.2. “The ending,” Woodward says,” is almost spatially notated.” (Spatial notation is a technique of the 20th century avant-garde, where notes are placed close together or further apart according to how much silence the composer wants between them.) “The bars don’t add up - because he doesn’t want them to.” Woodward finds a similar idea at work in one of the last pieces, the Nocturne in B, Opus 62 No.1. Chopin’s harmonies can also be quite startling, and some of his favorite harmonic devices seem to grow out of the improvised way these pieces were created. For example,

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he produces unexpected combinations of notes by delaying the return of a chord that one would expect to hear under a given note. And while his modulations from one key to another are not as surprising in the Nocturnes as they are in some of the larger piano works, he does at times create a tonally ambiguous or modal quality that seems to presage the much later music of Debussy. The Nocturnes are essentially in ABA or “song form.” At its simplest (for example, in the Nocturnes of John Field, Chopin’s early Nocturnes, or Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words), this means there is an opening A section, a contrasting B section that is usually in a different (though related) key, and then a return to the material of the A section. Perhaps the true measure of Chopin’s genius in the Nocturnes is the apparently unending variety he brings to this simple form. As Roger Woodward says, “it is instructive to see how he took the idea from John Field, beginning with the early Opus 9, and following his progress finally to the magnificent flowering in the Opus 62.”

The progression is a fascinating one to hear, so this recording presents the Nocturnes in chronological order. Trois Nocturnes, Opus 9. Published in 1832 and probably composed in the two years prior, these represent Chopin’s refinement of the ideas developed by John Field, inspired also by the popular vocal style known as serenade. The vocal quality is much in evidence in the second Nocturne in this set, but it might also explain how Chopin is able to spin out such a wistful melody in the first of the Nocturnes over such a surprisingly long stretch of time. The third Nocturne, in B, has a genial, untroubled feeling and much to recommend it, but the acknowledged masterpiece of this first published set is the Nocturne in Eb, Opus 9 No.2, one of the piano’s greatest hits and a piece that already sees Chopin playing with the apparently simple ABA form. The alleged return of the A section at the end of the piece has a floating quality that, as Roger Woodward has mentioned, seems to go beyond bar lines. Trois Nocturnes, Opus 15. This trio

seems to have been written in fairly rapid succession and was published in 1833 – just one year after the first set and a good indication of the popularity Chopin enjoyed in Paris. As with the Opus 9 set, the second piece seems to have the most vocal ornamentation. But the Opus 15 is no mere retread of the earlier works: the first of the three, in F major, is a somewhat agitated piece, although it eventually settles down and reaches a peaceful conclusion. And the last of the three, in G minor (a key the composer would return to in the Opus 37 Nocturnes), takes an apparently incongruous musical element – namely sacred music – and folds it into this spare, intimate setting. After a B section that seems quite passionate, Chopin marks the final section “religioso” – quite a departure from what has come before, and not nearly the simple return to the opening A section that one might have expected. “A music of extraordinary bliss and ecstasy,” Roger Woodward says. Deux Nocturnes, Opus 27. By 1836, Chopin had left John Field behind and

made the Nocturne form his own. In the Opus 27 he displays two contrasting but complementary approaches. The first of the pair is a lush, romantic work. The second has a memorably beautiful cantilena, reminiscent of the arias in the cantatas of Bach. Deux Nocturnes, Opus 32. Published in 1837, this duo builds on the breakthroughs of the previous year’s set. Again, Chopin plays with the ABA form in the first Nocturne: instead of a true return to the A section he adds a dramatic coda. The second Nocturne, in Ab major, is more familiar to listeners in its orchestral version – it appears in the ballet Les Sylphides. Deux Nocturnes, Opus 37. Having apparently settled on the format of paired, contrasting Nocturnes, Chopin’s 1840 publication features two unusual works. The first of the two is an echo of the Nocturne in G minor, Opus 15 No.3. In form, character, and even key, the Nocturne in G Minor, Opus 37 No.1 closely resembles its older sibling. The lilting opening section leads to a more dynamic central passage, and then, as in the

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