The Nocturne is a piece of music born in classical times and was intended for the orchestra. During the Romanticism era, this genre changed its character to become a musical miniature, especially for the piano. Chopin's Nocturnes were written at various times in his short life. They are a faithful image of his poet's soul. They are perhaps his greatest title of glory, they are his most perfect works. The nature of his talent; the purity of form, almost always with that dreamy melancholy stamp that gives so much charm to everything he wrote, develops in the Nocturnes with incomparable elegance. When Chopin played them, he added an ornamentation from the Italian opera, fine beaded droplets translating the vocal art of 'portamento' and 'coloratura' on the piano. The Nocturnes' deeply interiorized atmosphere, their whispering aspect turned towards you, against any spectacular effect, is in fact the most difficult to render. The extreme modesty and poetry of Arrau, which sheds light on every note, every arabesque, every inflection of the piano with an almost painful restraint, give these Nocturnes something very touching. Remembering, in the depths of a night that could be ultimate, the tenderness that touched him, the dramas that scratched him, the reveries that cradled him, Arrau, through Chopin, dialogues with himself and one is almost embarrassed to be present. His piano, with its warm or silvery, autumnal or soothed sounds, is like an intimate notebook on which he notes secrets as he hums them to himself, with a handful of breath that fogs up the glass in front of which he watches. In the depths of this night that we share with him, a whole life passes in twenty-one bewitching poems that are twenty-one masterpieces recreated. As a reward for this sublime interpretation, Claudio Arrau was awarded the Golden Diapason of the Year 1979. END
