Nocturnes

Description

The unpublished Nocturne. Published in 1829 by the Moscow Musical Review, the posthumous Nocturne was discovered at the Saint Petersburg Library by Florent Albrecht. It is a world premiere engraving. A child prodigy, John Field began his career as a representative for Clementi & Co, a renowned piano manufacturer in Dublin. He represented his firm on several commercial tours across Europe. In 1803, during a stop in Moscow, he decided to settle in Russia. There, he had a brilliant career as a virtuoso and piano teacher. He died on his return from a tour in Naples. Field composed his Nocturnes between 1812 and 1835, at a time when, as Guy Sacre writes in La Musique de piano, "the piano, bolstered by its mechanical advancements, aspires to rival the voice, in cantability, expressiveness, and emotion," inventing "a genre to pour out the heart, in the manner of vocal romance." For his first album, Florent Albrecht chose the piano of Meglio that Field might have played during his stay in Naples in 1834 and introduces us to an unpublished nocturne. A passionate keyboardist, Florent Albrecht trained in modern piano with Laurent Cabasso, in pianoforte with Pierre Goy, and in harpsichord in Kenneth Weiss's class. After significant encounters with Paul Badura-Skoda, Charles Rosen, and Malcolm Bilson that marked his artistic journey, he was a laureate of the Royaumont Foundation in 2018. Alongside his regular chamber music partners like Chantal Santon-Jeffery and Anna Reinhold, Florent Albrecht surrounds himself with an eclectic mix of demanding musicians: Violaine Cochard, Jean-Marc Phillips, Marie Perbost, Karine Deshayes, David Plantier, and conductors Chiara Banchini, Alexis Kossenko, and Vaclav Luks. As a soloist or in chamber music, which he particularly enjoys, he has performed at the Barbican Center in London, the National Auditorium in Madrid, the Munich Philharmonic, the Juilliard School in New York, the Philharmonie, and the Paris Opera. In 2020, he was invited by the Orchestre National de France for a Beethoven program at the Grand Auditorium of Radio France in Paris, broadcast live by France Musique. The pianoforte (1826) by Carlo de Meglio reflects the Austrian influence on the Kingdom of Naples: it is indeed a Viennese instrument of six octaves built in Naples in 1826. It was restored by Ugo Casiglia in 2004, with minimal intervention to preserve the instrument.