When @danno858 invited me over late last year and he and I took turns playing his Steinway, he asked whether I could play any Nocturnes. I couldn't.
But since then I've been practicing Chopin's Op. 62, No. 1 in B-major.
In his book, "Chopin: The Man and His Music", critic James Huneker calls it the "Tuberose" nocturne: "the Tuberose Nocturne, is faint with a sick, rich odor. The climbing trellis of notes, that so unexpectedly leads to the tonic, is charming and the chief tune has charm, a fruity charm."
Well, I happen to like tuberoses. They remind me of jasmine flowers. And if you've never walked under a banyan tree on a warm moonlit night in the tropics with knotted wreathes of jasmine flowers wrapped through your hair... well, you've missed something. (Although like the "Moonlight Sonata," names tacked on by others are just their fancy.)
I turned on my phone during one of my four days' access to acoustics at the recent Tonebase intensive and recorded a run-through of the nocturne. Steinway B in a small-ish practice room with flat walls and the mics of my Pixel phone.
There are many recordings at different tempos. Garrick Ohlsson's seems glacial to me. A favorite nowadays is the dreamy version recorded by Kate Liu. My first exposure was Ashkenazy's and Rubinstein's versions. I played it fairly "straight" in this recording. It's fun to have options.
So thanks, danno858, for prompting me to work on the piece 🙂