Maria João Pires - Frédéric Chopin: The Nocturnes, Complete Recording (1996) 2CDs
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 344 Mb | Scans included | Time: 01:49:11
Genre: Classical | Label: Deutsche Grammophon | # 477 096-2
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 344 Mb | Scans included | Time: 01:49:11
Genre: Classical | Label: Deutsche Grammophon | # 477 096-2
Passion rather than insouciance is Pires’s keynote. Here is no soft, moonlit option but an intensity and drama that scorn all complacent salon or drawing-room expectations. How she relishes Chopin’s central storms, creating a vivid and spectacular yet unhistrionic contrast with all surrounding serenity or ‘embalmed darkness’. The con fuoco of Op. 15 No. 1 erupts in a fine fury and in the first Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 1, Pires’s sharp observance of Chopin’s appassionato marking comes like a prophecy of the coda’s sudden blaze. Such resolution and psychological awareness make you realize that Chopin, like D. H. Lawrence, may well have thought that “there must be a bit of fear, and a bit of horror in your life”. Chopin, Pires informs us in no uncertain terms, was no sentimentalist.