Following her critically acclaimed coupling of the Britten & Barber Piano Concertos with the London Symphony Orchestra, Elizabeth Joy Roe enlightens the extraordinary world of John Field.

John Field has been called the ‘Father of the Nocturne’, creating the form which Chopin perfected, but thus relegated to a footnote in musical history. In fact he was held in high regard by his contemporaries: a student of Clementi, he knew Haydn, Hummel, Czerny and Mendelssohn, was championed by Liszt and an acknowledged influence on Chopin, Brahms and Schumann.

Field led an extraordinary life: Dublin-born, he travelled throughout Europe in the early 19th century, lived in St Petersburg and Moscow, fathered an illegitimate child and led an extravagant lifestyle, more or less drinking himself to early death in Moscow in 1837.