Your insightful comments are an added bonus!

Thank you!

Thank you! I never noticed, but these two nocturnes open with the exact same interval (scale degree 5-scale degree 3). Maybe Chopin was consciously looking back to one of his earlier works?

Thank you! I'll need to take a listen to the Pogorelich recording.

@@TheIndependentPianist The Pogo is the only other recording of Op 62, No. 2 I have come across that invests it with the same valedictorian insight of Claudio Arrau's performance. I am listening to yours at the moment, and it is also very moving.

That one is amazing as well of course-also Op 62 no 1 is quite extraordinary. Chopin was really hitting it out of the park left and right by that time in his life.

And Claudio Arrau

In later life Raoul Pugno also became the teacher of Ernst Levy ...

Yes! One of the few-although he does speed up later on in the piece. You’re obviously a cultured listener to spot that. It was my initial inspiration for this tempo, although I ended up playing the entire piece slower than usual, and not just the opening/ending.

Look rubestein, this is played at the exactly right tempo. Rubinstein misses the point of the idea of nocturne. Listen to Claudio Arrau who understood it. Igo Pogorelich played it more slower btw.

I can't tell if you are really serious with these "incendiary" comments or if you are just trying to goad me into replying at this point...but hey I'm happy to discuss it with you! Actually I find your criticism of the F minor Ballade kind of mystifying. If you are trying to accuse him of being over repetitious there are far better pieces to use. For starters there is an extremely elaborate development of the main theme starting in m. 46 which also goes to a completely new harmonic destination. Then there is a canonical version of the theme at m.135, the kind of fantasy like version at m. 152, all connected with a wealth of supporting material-written in a refined and complex contrapuntal manner. The "repetitious" version of the theme is only the first step in an elaborate free-form theme and variations-with aspects of sonata form incorporated as well. It's a fascinating and original idea for a large scale piece, all the more surprising from the seemingly conservative Chopin. Unfortunately you do need an attention span longer than 2 minutes to enjoy the piece :-) I kid, I kid! Writing his music off as salon music is also a little odd to me. Sure he did write salon pieces-they are mostly among his earliest pieces, so Op.9 no. 1 I suppose is as good an example as any. It is a pretty intensely expressive piece to just be labeled "background music." It's also worth remembering that much of the greatest music written during the 19th century was intended for salon performance-songs of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms anyone? So just saying that a work is intended for an intimate setting does not necessarily mean that it is less worthy of attention. And the matter of repetition-well this is kind of subjective. There is no doubt that repetition, at some level, is pretty much essential for sustaining musical structure. Something about the abstract nature of musical sound seems to require this-notwithstanding certain experiments to the contrary. Chopin did start out with a more classical bias in form, so a work like Op.9 No. 1 is fairly repetitive, although no more so than the nocturnes of Field, and many of the greatest works of Schumann, Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven etc etc. I guess my own feeling would be, that the intensity of what he is writing, and the originality of it, compensate. At least in the hands of a master performer. And maybe it's just me, but I actually find that rather a large percentage of his oeuvre is of an astonishingly high level of technical and emotional mastery. From 1829 on there is hardly a piece that isn't a masterwork: Etudes, Mazurkas, Waltzes, Preludes, Nocturnes, Ballades, Scherzi, Polonaises, Polonaise-Fantasy, 2nd and 3rd sonatas, the Cello Sonata, the Barcarole, Fantasie... Not pieces to be taken lightly! And I think his 65 opus were pretty impressive, considering what a perfectionist he was, and that he only lived to the age of 39. This is all highly subjective of course... If you don't like Chopin, then by all means, don't listen to him! I personally think you are missing out of course. 🙂

Wtf did I just read? Suffering from Dunning-Kruger effect?? Hey kid, go look up and watch Gerrick Ohlsson's interview on Chopin about 10 years ago at UCLA.

@@jisyang8781 This is 2 years ago 'kid". You are responding to a person who doesn't in anyway hold his previous views.

@@DanielFahimi man grows up but character rarely changes. Hope you realize humility is a sign of maturity. And being humble allows you to improve. Wish you best.

@@jisyang8781 "man grows up but character rarely changes." lol, nope! Citation needed. Where does it say one can't change his own character. " Hope you realize humility is a sign of maturity. And being humble allows you to improve. Wish you best." I acknowledge that. I also acknowledge that I was arrogant and foolish at the time I wrote that tripe.