Chopin: Ballades & Nocturnes

English pianist Jonathan Phillips has recorded a new album of works by Chopin to follow his “J.S. Bach: Tranquillity” (Divine Art DDX 21102, to be released on May 12).  Bach was one of Chopin’s principal influences, especially in the chromaticism and harmonic elements of the inner parts – influences which later informed the styles of Mahler and Wagner among so many others.  For this album, Phillips presents the four Ballades together with five of the glorious Nocturnes; he explains his choice of repertoire:

“So, to the four Ballades. Why? Why play them and why record them? Well, these four unique compositions capture the essence of Chopin’s output for me. Op 23, Op 38, Op 47 and Op 52, span his lifetime and represent a distillation of the evolution of his musical language. Crucially, I have been aware of them since I was a teenager, when as a 13-year-old I bought a wonderful Classics for Pleasure LP recording of all four Ballades played by Valentina Kaminikova (which I still have somewhere!)  I think it fair to say that record together with another record of the Chopin Etudes (played by Samson François) lit the blue touch paper and ignited the rocket fuel required to convert my desire to learn, understand, possess, and recreate Chopin’s extraordinary virile, powerful, muscular, and explosive music. Ultimately, they are a huge challenge, as anyone who has tackled them will know. The motivation for preparing them all to create my own recording of them can be traced back to those adolescent years!

Once again, and critically for me, this recording rather like the Bach Tranquillity CD was made in such a way as to replicate a “live“ performance. Two consecutive live performances were given, and that was it!  There is no point in endless editing, as for me, the sanitised performance of a highly edited recording no longer communicates that which takes place in live performance.”