Classical Music | Piano Music

Frédéric Chopin

Nocturne in E-flat Major, Op. 55 No. 2  Play

Gabriel Escudero Piano

Recorded on 01/12/2010, uploaded on 03/02/2010

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Composed between 1842 and 1844, the nocturnes of opus 55 were Chopin’s penultimate contributions to a genre he elevated to the heights of artistic mastery from the humble beginnings which the Irish composed John Field pioneered. As they stand fairly late in his career, with only opus 67 postdating them, this pair of miniatures presents an accurate picture of the great distance which Chopin himself travelled from his early Fieldian nocturnes. Like the mazurkas and waltzes, the nocturne became a genre uniquely his own, imbued with a sentiment, color and originality that only Chopin could give it.

Though they were largely neglected after their composition and during the early part of the 20th century, the opus 55 nocturnes are today among the most oft performed of Chopin’s works, particularly the first in F minor which has become a popular piece because of its less strenuous technical demands. The second nocturne, however, is a piece of an entirely different character. Whereas the nocturne ideal, as established by Field, employs a tripartite form, which Chopin usually adhered to, the Nocturne in E-flat major instead gives only a vague semblance of any traditional formal design. Chopin, here, presents us with a single melody, passionate in nature but inevitably trapped in its own daydream—like a consciousness fixated on a solitary thought to the point of even denying it any degree of variation, a thought complete in and of itself. A fortissimo statement of the beginning of the melody occurring midway through the piece, somewhat embellished in its first few measures, gives the impression that we had at some point departed from the melody, but in reality the reverie has not changed. Only in the coda, with the subtle passing of harmonies tinged with the minor mode, is any change sensed at all. Block chords suddenly give a feeling of resolve and, in the final tonic chords that conclude the nocturne, it is apparent the master has awakened from his daydream.      Joseph DuBose