We've all had that strange déjà vu experience before, where something new feels somehow familiar.
That was the experience Alice Sara Ott had when she began playing through John Field's Nocturnes.
She hadn't grown up playing them, she hadn't really studied them in school, and yet the music felt nostalgic.
Most music lovers have a sort of Pavlovian response to the term nocturne. Nocturne = broody Chopin. And while that is certainly not wrong — Chopin developed the style more than any other composer — it wasn't actually Chopin who created the nocturne. That honor goes to John Field, an 18th Century pianist born in Ireland who would eventually become one of the musical darlings of Russia.
Very few pianists have recorded the complete Nocturnes of Field. Now Alice Sara Ott is one of them. She spoke to me about how the pandemic led her to these nocturnes, how there can be freedom in simplicity, and more.
