Chopin: 19 Nocturnes (Moravec)

A capital-G Great Recording. Once in a very rare while one of these comes along that is so stubbornly & irreducibly beautiful that it’s sort of hard to say anything sensible about it, which obviously leaves reviewers and aficionados with a bit of a problem. I don’t think I really knew what legato playing was before I heard this recording, or what Chopin’s long phrase marks were actually meant to mean *aurally*. There’s too much to praise here: ultra-fine dynamic control, tempi neither fast or slow but always reverential, rubato as free as it is natural, the sheer glory of the tone as Moravec unfurls those long melodies. Even the relatively pedestrian opening of a nocturne like the 15.1 suddenly makes the breath catch. It’s weird and deeply uplifting and makes you want to learn all the nocturnes but despair at actually doing it at the same time. Everyone likes Chopin’s nocturnes, but perhaps because they’re so generous and immediate in what they offer the listener, their