Simple melodies appealingly and tenderly hover over richly figured harmonies and seem to drift out into infinity. John Field is the author of these magical nocturnes, and one generation before the much more famous Pole (Chopin) he combined strongly expressive romanticism with an extraordinary keyboard intuition.

Stefan Irmer performs on volume 1 of the complete nocturnes of John Field.

Field never viewed his works as finished; every time he performed them he added something new to them – inspired by the circumstances, the public, and the atmosphere of the moment. For this reason, some of his nocturnes have been transmitted in significantly different versions.

Stefan Irmer rises to this challenging piano adventure: employing musical means from our times, he continues Field’s music, adding his own ideas to it. Influences from jazz and tango are also in evidence.