This piano piece is like a deeply sad bel canto aria, but with a happy ending: the Nocturne No. 20 in C sharp minor, Op. posth. By Frédéric Chopin. As beloved by pianists as it is by audiences, the Nocturne is played here by Lars Vogt as the encore to a concert at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany in 2015.
Frédéric Chopin (1810 – 1849) titled the short, melancholic piano piece, now known as Nocturne No. 20 in C sharp minor, Op. posthumous, simply as “Lento con gran expressione.” The title “Nocturne” comes from Chopin's sister Ludwika, to whom the piece is also dedicated. Ludwika Chopin had compiled a list of her brother's works that were not intended for publication, including the untitled piano piece in C sharp minor, which she simply published as Nocturne No. 20. The piece, one of his early works, was composed by Frédéric Chopin in 1830, when he was still living in his native Poland.
In the 18th century, nocturnes — or night music — were pieces for small ensembles that were performed outdoors in the evening or at night. The piano genre of the nocturne did not develop until the 19th century and can be traced back to the Irish piano virtuoso and composer John Field (1782–1837). Field’s nocturnes were characterized by their song form and ornamentation in the melody, which resembled those of singing voices. Chopin adopted the romantic genre from Field and developed it further in his own style. The German pianist and composer Franz Liszt (1811–1886) even compared the piano melodies in Chopin's nocturnes to the vocal melodies of Vincenzo Bellini's (1801–1835) bel canto arias. Many of his contemporaries agreed with this comparison.
The bel canto label is especially apt for Chopin’s Nocturne No. 20 in C sharp minor as it has a three-part song structure. After a brief introduction, the right hand plays the first theme, whose melancholy melody can easily be imagined as a sung aria theme. The left hand accompanies in broken chords. After the theme has been repeated in variations, the middle part appears (01:14). This is less reminiscent of an aria than of an art song by Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828). Indeed, Chopin uses parts from his own Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 21, which he had composed shortly before the Nocturne. In the third part, the first theme reappears, again in variation (02:15). The ending of the Nocturne is interesting: the deeply sad piece ends with a “Picardy third,” the name given to a piece written in a minor key that ends unexpectedly in a major key. This has the effect of suddenly lightening the mood and giving the piece a kind of happy ending.
The story of how Chopin's Nocturne No. 2, Op. 21 played a key role during World War II seems fitting here: On September 23, 1939, the world-famous Polish pianist Władysław Szpilman (1911 – 2000) played the Nocturne live on Polish radio. The performance had to be interrupted because a bomb dropped by Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht exploded in the studio. Six years later, Szpilman, a Holocaust survivor, played the same piece on Polish radio, celebrating the defeat of the Nazis. This historically significant story of a piece of music and its performer was later powerfully retold in Roman Polanski's film “The Pianist” (2002).
© 2015 Accentus Music
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