Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 11/13/2007, uploaded on 01/19/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

I have dubbed today's Noontime concert a "Moonlight Recital" with a variety of pieces celebrating the nighttime.

Fauré's Nocturne in e-flat minor, Op. 33, No. 1 (c. 1875) is his first in a fascinating collection of 13 Nocturnes whose composition dates span almost fifty years of Fauré's life.  This first nocturne opens with a deep and ancient sorrow, leading to a section of stark medieval sound introduced by a solo left-hand accompaniment figure reminiscent of a bowed viola da gamba sound.  A chordal melody appearing over the top of this evokes ancient images of armor, castles, passageways, and tapestries depicting epic battles.  A third theme features a dotted melody shadowed at the octave above by a melodic line in straight eighth notes.  Samuel Barber's Nocturne, Op. 33, published in 1959, blends Romantic sensibility and harmonic language with 20^th-century dissonance, while also embracing Baroque-style polyphony in the nocturne's fugal middle section.     Oni Buchanan

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.