Concert programme — nocturnes

Although only one of the piano nocturnes in this programme actually declares itself a tribute to John Field, the Irish composer who invented the genre, all three of the others are more or less directly indebted to him. Chopin quite deliberately modelled his early nocturnes on the Field prototype, the influence of which can be detected at all stages in his development – not least in the arpeggio accompaniment and sustained melodic line in the outer sections of his Op.27 No.1. In their turn Fauré’s early nocturnes derive, like much of his piano music of the same period, from Chopin. Even in his first fully characteristic Nocturne, No.4 in E flat major, the Chopin model is still clearly perceptible in the opening bars. But the tender shape of that melodic line is entirely personal, as is the turbulent middle section approached by way of an eerie episode evoking distant bells. As a “homage to John Field,” Barber’s Nocturne is more than a little bizarre: it begins with conventionally harmonised arpeggios in the left hand but projects above it a dissonant 12-note-melodic line which, in spite of many reassuringly familiar nocturne features, has a peculiarly disorientating effect. Britten’s Night Piece (which was written for the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition in 1963) makes a consciously traditional start but departs at an early stage in a radically different direction, towards the “night music” that so disturbingly and yet so poetically haunts the pianistic imagination of Bartok.