Chopin: The 20 Nocturnes & Piano Recital by Thierry de Brunhoff (2023 Remastered, Paris 1961-73)

The Nocturne is a piece of music born in the classical era and was intended for the orchestra. During the Romantic era, this genre changed its character and became a musical miniature, especially for the piano. 

Chopin's Nocturnes were written at various times in his short life. They are a true reflection of his poetic soul. The nature of his talent; the purity of form, almost always with that stamp of dreamy melancholy which gives so much charm to everything he wrote, develops in the Nocturnes with incomparable elegance. 

When Chopin played them, he added ornamentation from the Italian opera, fine pearled droplets translating the vocal art of 'portamento' and 'coloratura' to the piano.

Thierry de Brunhoff, born in 1934, is the youngest of the three sons of Jean de Brunhoff, the creator of the famous animated drawing Babar. Orphan very young (Jean de Brunhoff died when he was just four years old), his mother, herself a piano teacher, entrusted his training to Alfred Cortot, a pedagogue and a musician who will have an immense influence on his career. An elegant and sensitive personality, he led a double career as a teacher at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris and as a concert performer.

In 1974, he decided to retire as a monk to the Abbey of En-Calcat in the Tarn and became Brother Thierry Jean. His concert and recording repertoire was very broad, from Beethoven to Debussy and Weber, but he remained particularly renowned for his interpretations of Chopin and Schumann.

These recordings of Chopin’s Nocturnes rank among the finest in the entire discography. From the very first notes, one is struck by their deeply intimate character. Thierry de Brunhoff approaches both the melodic and harmonic material in a highly personal way, as evidenced by his distinctive use of the sustain pedal. Musical phrases often seem to fade away like an ellipsis rather than conclude with a full stop, leaving the listener suspended in a delightful state of reverie and dreamlike contemplation...