I am stumping up the cash this month to buy a complete set of Chopin's Nocturnes.

Any recommendations as to performer. What are your favourites renditions? Barenboim, Arrau, Rubinstein etc etc.

thanks

That is a tough question. I do not think that you would be disappointed by any of the sets you have mentioned - they are (or were) all world-class pianists.

The nocturnes are popular and not tremendously difficult so just about everyone has made a recording of at least some of them. I have the full sets by Rubinstein, Arrau, Ashkenazy, and Maria João Pires and miscellaneous individual nocturnes by Melvyn Tan, Martha Argerich, Vladimir Horowitz and Idil Biret. Each of those pianists has their own unique sound and interpretation and I like them all, despite faults and eccentricities in some of them. As usual Horowitz stands out for precision and for variety of tone. Horowitz unfortunately recorded only about half of the Nocturnes and they are spread between several CDs.

I could not choose a best but I suspect that if Martha Argerich ever releases a recording of the complete set that is anywhere near as good as her recording of the Preludes, then it will take the gold medal - at least for me. But so far as I know she has recorded only a handful of them to date.

I think this is one where you are going to have to spend some time listening to many recordings (at libraries, in good record shops, on the net, borrowed from friends, ...) to find one that you especially like.

MadTom as usual has a wealth of experience with these matters

I can only add that, Ashkenazy's recording of the Nocturnes is my personal favourite - quite restrained (for him), and beautiful, considered performances. But Martha Argerich's full set would indeed be the trump recording, when / if it exists, I imagine.

denmark

I have Ashkenazy too, as good as anything you will find, and the 2 CD set has the Scherzi as well

Realistically, all those guys are fine depending on what you may like (I would include Pollini though some people don't like him).

But as the absolute pinnacle of Chopin performance, following in the true 'Chopin tradition' I would recommend Raoul Koczalski.

He was a pupil of Mikuli (who would probably be my first recommendation were it possible to record at the time) and I've read he released a recording of a selection of pieces. I can't remember the LP title but I have it written somewhere (I think it's in Selected correspondence or such book).

I assume it would be incredibly hard to get hold of, believe me I've tried without much success, and would probably cost a billion pounds. But definitely go for Koczalski if you can, it would probably be an eye opener.

EDIT: A billion pounds was an exaggeration by the way.

He recorded quite a lot of Chopin, but so far as I know he only recorded a few of the nocturnes, and all of his recordings are very old, so the recording technology is not up to modern standards. If we are going to go that far back, and look at historic recordings, then Rosenthal and Paderewski and other pianists of that era come into consideration

Well, not really no. Remember that Chopin, as outlined in his 'Projet de Methode' was particular about his teaching approach and about performance. I think Rosenthal was initially a pupil of Liszt (in his formative stages in any case) and as everyone knows there is an enourmous difference; Liszt favoured the methods of Kalkbrenner, Czerny, Herz etc... It was all much more brutal and competitive (like his use of Kalkbrenner's 'guide-main' hand-guide device), the argument of 'dialectician vs schematist'; in any case very different.

Although Chopin leaned toward the classical tradition of Clementi, Field and others he developed his own unique approach, much more practical (i.e. starting pupils on E major or B major rather than C) in comparison to methods back then and which are unchanged today.

That is part of the reason why the authenticity is lost. Panderewski was a Pole (I am going from memory) and he did perform some of Chopin but again he isn't very much part of that legacy. I don't know very much about Panderewski though and might well be wrong.

Regarding the recordings themselves, Koczalski actually played most of his works including his Ballades (23,38,47), Scherzo, the Nocturnes (9/2, 15/2, 27/2 etc..), the often butchered Impromptu Op.66 and many more. I did look them up (finally) and they are listed in Armand Panigel and Marcel Beaufils discography.

I have two sets - by Angela Hewitt (of interest mainly to hear how one of the pre-eminent Bachians deals with the Romantic repertoire - a very commendable performance) and my favourite, Ivan Moravec, who must surely be a contender.

My favourite would have to be Tamas Vasary, Though I'm not sure if DG ever issued his recordings on CD. Baremboim does have a wonderful tone, and I'd highly recommend that one, also on DG... I'd have to say though, unlike Mad Tom, I think many of the Nocturnes are difficult to play well, it's their intracacies that get me...trying to play them with finesse. I'm aiming to learn about fifteen of them, and i'd have to say most of them are still some way off, but such a worthwhile mission.

But I agree! "Not tremendously difficult" is still difficult for me - and just as you say,the problem is getting them to flow with apparent effortlessness with all the little details just right. But they are not difficult like some of the etudes or parts of the ballades and scherzos, or the 16th prelude, or the second sonata.
.

Thanks for all the replies . I went for Ashkenazy in the end. I am impressed so far. I havn't actually laid back and 'listened' yet, but he seems very good.