John Area: Full Nocturnes (DG)
★★★★★
Essentially the most influential Irishman within the historical past of music just isn’t Bob Geldof, Bono, Sinead O’Connor or the Dubliners, all of whom are well-known as influenza, however a reasonably obscure piano salesman who awoke a sub-continent to its artistic potential.
John Area was born in Dublin in 1782 to Anglican mother and father who took him to London to work for Muzio Clementi, Beethoven’s publishing accomplice and piano seller. As a rep for the rich Clementi, Area travelled to Paris and Vienna earlier than settling in St Petersburg, the place he starred on the new-founded Philharmonic Society. Area gave three piano classes to Mikhail Glinka, who was the primary profitable Russian composer.
In London in the meantime, Clementi printed Area’s works, amongst them a line of ‘nocturnes’, by which he meant moods that go bump within the evening. Chopin later claimed the style as his personal. Area, a little bit of a boozer, died in Moscow on the age of 54 and was comprehensively forgotten.
The German-Japanese pianist Alice Sara Ott got here throughout his music throughout COVID lockdown whereas searching for music ‘that will mirror my mildly depressed way of thinking on the time.’ Ott’s method to the nocturnes is audibly post-Chopin, however none the more severe for that. The precise hand takes runs to the moon whereas the left picks out a hummable melody.
There are 18 nocturnes within the album and the second, in C minor, is probably the most demonstrably Chopin-basket. I’m drawn to the lyrical fifth, in B flat main, a wisp of regrets.
Ott’s enjoying is charming, even when the music will get too wispy. Don’t hear the entire set directly otherwise you may not sleep at evening, however two or three will uplift your temper.
This set is unquestionably a keeper. I hear it’s DG’s most-streamed album of the second.
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Norman Lebrecht is without doubt one of the most widely-read commentators on music, tradition and cultural politics. He’s an everyday presenter on BBC Radio 3 and a contributor to the Wall Road Journal, Bloomberg, Standpoint, Sinfini and different publications. His weblog, Slipped Disc, is among the many most generally learn cultural websites on-line, breaking unique tales and campaigning towards human abuse and acts of injustice within the cultural industries.
