After the release of a single in November 2024 and the commercial launch of the full album on February 7 of this year, accompanied by the dissemination on social networks of various video clips of diverse aesthetics, the articulate presentation to the world of Alice Sara Ott and Deutsche Grammophon’s project around Field’s Nocturnes has just been completed this Saturday, February 15, with the premiere of the film Alice Sara Ott: Nocturne, on Stage+.

There’s a lot to say about this fascinating album. Alice Sara Ott has been unsettling me for some time now—something I actually appreciate. I wasn’t lucky the first time I saw her; that day, she didn’t play well, and it took me years to connect with what she was recording and performing in public. However, with each step she took, my admiration for her kept growing. Perhaps I, too, have changed. Over the years, Alice Sara Ott has become an icon of a world that may not be entirely mine, yet feels increasingly close—a world eager to be fascinated by simplicity, intimacy, and, why not, fragility. For instance, she posts videos on YouTube and social media that are not always technically polished or of high audiovisual quality—but that is precisely what makes them fascinating: she presents herself just as she is, without edits or retouching.

This connects with her broader social media presence: she is charming in interviews, always ready to share glimpses of her daily life and spontaneous laughter, and never exudes the underlying arrogance of someone who considers themselves special and outstanding. I don’t know her personally, so I can’t say how much this public image aligns with her day-to-day reality, but there’s no doubt that her approach reflects a deliberate way of presenting herself to the world. Whether she is studying at home, doing origami to warm up her hands before going on stage or solving the Rubik’s Cube (in 49 seconds, which is not bad at all), the feeling she gives you is never that of someone who is telling you “how good I am”, but rather showing what she is doing—a performance, obviously, but spontaneous and sincere, perfect for this TikTok era.

That association between music and experiences has become art with the album she released in 2021, Echoes of Life, where Chopin’s Preludes op. 28 are interspersed with a series of recent works by diverse authors presented with labels that turn the whole album into a life story, which begins with an explicit “In the beginning” by Francesco Tristano, continues with an “Infant rebellion”, passes through a “No roadmap to adulthood” and ends with a “Lullaby to eternity” by Alice Sara Ott herself, built on fragments of the Lachrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem. The most chilling moment comes with that peculiar funeral march that is Prelude No. 20 and the successive Für Alina, by Arvo Pärt (“A path to where”), a work that Ott herself linked —especially in this video, which left me very marked— with the onset of the chronic illness she announced on social media in 2019, thus making explicit a link that is also appreciated, in a really disturbing way, in the two video clips that Hakan Demirel and Ahmet Doğu Ipek made about this performance, the first of them in particular, where the pianist’s body is multiplying and fading away in a dreamlike world, full of invisible barriers.

Four years after Echoes of Life, and following a Beethoven album that had less to unpack, Ott now presents this new release dedicated entirely to John Field’s Nocturnes. She follows the numbering proposed around 1870 by editor Julius Schuberth—an edition of particular interest because none other than Franz Liszt revised it. (I will follow this numbering in the continuation of this post.) The album is accompanied by the same meticulous promotion as her previous releases, yet the sound approach is unlike anything she has done before.

One of the most intriguing aspects is its post-production, which raises questions I hope to answer more thoroughly and with greater documentation in the future. We do know that the album was recorded in Dolby Atmos, which in itself is not an entirely new development. However, the piano is not the ideal instrument to take full advantage of this immersive technology. The real potential of Dolby Atmos emerges when capturing natural environments or large-scale sonic events—for instance, an orchestra, with its spatial dimension and instrumental diversity, benefits far more from this system than a solo instrument with a single sound source. Moreover, Dolby Atmos was developed for cinema, meaning it excels at enhancing dramatic contrasts. That’s why, when it comes to piano recordings, its most notable applications have been in particularly colorful repertoires, as seen in the brilliant Rapsodia Mexicana by Argentina Durán.

Alice Sara Ott’s Field is built entirely on subtle shadings, making it seem like the last place where such a system would be effective. And yet, it’s clear that the technology has been skillfully leveraged—without ever losing the sense of naturalness, which ensures the digital mediation is not overtly apparent. This contrasts sharply with the highly artificial aesthetic of all the music videos released so far for these Nocturnes. Perhaps the album’s most defining feature is its rich range of nuances leading up to silence. Here, it’s difficult to determine how much credit goes to the performer (certainly a great deal) and how much is due to choices made during the recording and post-production process.

I do not have a technical sheet to determine exactly how this album was recorded, how many microphones were used, or their precise placement. Some aspects, however, are immediately noticeable upon first listen, while others can be inferred from certain images in the presentation feature film Alice Sara Ott: Nocturne, directed by Andrew Staples. The most striking detail is the number of small-diaphragm microphones positioned perpendicular to the strings, two of them placed directly in line with the hammers. At the same time, there are ambient microphones—some positioned high up, others just behind the performer, and likely additional ones at a greater distance. The result is a refined use of an increasingly common technique in classical music recording: combining highly direct and close-up microphone placements with others positioned at a distance to capture ambient sound. Here, it seems that several microphones have been set at different distances, creating an impression of natural reverberation without sacrificing clarity in the attack—an acoustic illusion, of course, since no one actually hears the music this way in a live setting, neither the audience nor the performer.

Moreover, the reverb is not consistent throughout the album. Some nocturnes feel almost dry (No. 12, for example, as well as Nos. 17 and 18), while in others, it is quite pronounced (No. 9, No. 15), with subtle variations that contribute to maintaining interest within an overall homogeneous sound world. This is not an entirely new technique—it’s even more extreme in Pavel Kolesnikov’s acclaimed recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations for Hyperion. But it caught my attention to find it used in a Deutsche Grammophon album and so carefully integrated into the overall approach, complementing Ott’s pedaling choices—sometimes delicate half-pedals that could evoke either the dampener-less pianos of Field’s era or impressionistic effects that suit the general tone of the album.

Some of the most ingenious interpretative solutions in the entire album are, in fact, inseparable from this use of resonance: the misty opening of No. 11, for example, or the entirety of No. 13, a piece whose obsessively repetitive structure is particularly difficult to handle and which here acquires a charm light-years away from any previous interpretation. And the management of the overall structure in the most challenging pieces is one of the many aspects I appreciate in this recording. What Alice Sara Ott achieves with No. 16, in particular, is astonishing; it is the longest nocturne in the series, almost a fantasy. However, its writing revolves around a set of formulas that are not particularly contrasting, so much so that it can easily come across as a meandering work, drifting aimlessly from one place to another, uncertain of when or how to end. On this album, however, not a single note seems superfluous in its more than eight minutes of music, and it even keeps you on edge until the very last second.

The last two nocturnes, No. 17 and No. 18, also present similar challenges; but in this case, the greatest surprise for me has come from another extraordinary aspect of this interpretation. We always associate Field with Chopin, particularly when it comes to nocturnes. In these last two tracks, however, I kept thinking of Schumann: those sudden silences, those rapid staccato chord patterns, the swift transition from lyrical, sentimental phrases to others that are more capricious and fleeting… This should not surprise us, given that these works were written in 1836: the world of the late Field is that of the young Schumann, and also that of the mature works of other figures who are largely forgotten today but are essential for understanding what had happened and was still happening in the meantime. Ignaz Moscheles, for instance, played a crucial role in invigorating piano writing by integrating it into the most popular genres of the time. The point is that these two nocturnes, which had always seemed rather insipid to me, or even completely out of place, are revealed here as works that perfectly represent the aesthetics of their time.

To achieve all this, Alice Sara Ott clearly employs an enormous variety of effects, which are particularly refined in some of the closing passages; the final bars of No. 2, No. 5, No. 9, and No. 10 are highly representative of this pursuit to extract the utmost from the tiniest detail. In fact, the overall impression I get from listening to the album is the same as the one conveyed by the various promotional videos in which the pianist herself discusses some of the nocturnes—clearly intended to leave us with the feeling that each one has something unique that defines it. And this is exactly what happens under her fingers: in each nocturne, there is at least one detail, one effect, one sonic peculiarity that is found in that nocturne and in no other, whether in the way a passage is delivered or in the highlighting of the most characteristic writing patterns.

Alice Sara Ott subtly brings out the harmonic nuances that emerge (I am thinking, in particular, of No. 7), often through an ingenious interaction with the overlapping of frequencies generated by the natural reverberation. Silences are extended where they carry rhetorical weight, just as the occasional use of staccato successfully disrupts the continuity of a melodic line that might otherwise become overly uniform. No. 12 serves as a good summary of all these elements, and it is also the piece that includes the only explicit break from the overall timbral homogeneity, thanks to an effect involving extended techniques superimposed onto the conventional recording, precisely in correspondence with the twelve repeated E’s that earned this piece the title Twelve O’Clock (as it was presented in the 1832 English edition; the corresponding Midi appeared on the Parisian edition the following year). The resulting bell effect is not merely a colorful curiosity: it signifies a deliberate foray into multitrack recording, a process that still seems taboo in classical music but is quietly—and with increasing frequency—making its way into our world.

In this and other aspects, it is evident that we are dealing with an album that engages with other aesthetics. The accompanying music videos make this explicit, but so does the overall sound of the album. However—and this is what I most wish to emphasize here—this openness to other influences does not result in an irredeemably pop product. This album makes a move, and it is a new one, but the playing field remains the same: the move achieves something new and unprecedented, yet it is an internal movement within the classical tradition. Just think of how many elements of this tradition converge here. First and foremost, the idea of a complete edition (although, to be fair, the Complete Nocturnes advertised on the cover are not truly “complete”: missing here are the two already listed by Cecil Hopkinson in 1961 in his Bibliographical Thematic Catalogue of the Works of John Field, 1782–1837, along with a reference to another nocturne, supposedly published by Jurgenson in its time, no copies of which have yet been found). Here, not only are these 18 nocturnes presented together—as in the now-distant era of Pollini, Ashkenazy, and Barenboim—but even the order of publication is respected, thus foregoing the possibility of a more striking opening that might immediately capture the listener’s attention (how many music never go beyond track 1?) or a more effective conclusion to the journey. Here, the final bars of No. 18—a piece that, in itself, does not feel like a proper ending—are played with particular discretion, as if quietly closing the door after putting a child to bed. It is the least glamorous ending imaginable. Or perhaps, precisely for that reason, it is the perfect conclusion to an album so delicate and introspective as a whole?

At the same time, this is not merely a succession of pieces. There is an awareness of a larger structure. Expressive gestures become more evident as the nocturnes progress, although everything happens gradually, almost imperceptibly. The transitions between nocturnes are where the careful effort to maintain variety within the whole is most apparent, especially where changes in character and texture are less obvious (from No. 1 to No. 2; from No. 5 to No. 6; from No. 12 to No. 13), at times with remarkable creativity (for instance, in the transition from No. 10 to No. 11).

Note by note, measure by measure, these subtle interpretative choices guide us through a journey that has never before felt so clear—so capable of traversing from Mozart to Schumann, and of leading us seamlessly from the vocality of Paisiello and Sarti to that of Bellini and Donizetti—so much so that one eventually forgets the model of Chopin, which tends to be omnipresent not only in discussions about Field but also in the complete recordings made to date.

However, with those complete recordings, this one shares a fundamental aspect: it remains far removed from the performance practices of Field’s time. In many respects, we are further than ever from the sound we can reasonably attribute to Field, and not just because Ott does not play a historical instrument. The vast distance between melody and accompaniment here takes to the extreme a practice that would have been unthinkable in Field’s time and only became dominant much later. Likewise, the synchronization of both hands—actually a product of 20th-century aesthetics—is nearly absolute here, interrupted only occasionally (and always very discreetly), although, interestingly, one such instance occurs in the second note of the album. The comparison with the Hupfeld piano roll of Nocturne No. 4 recorded by Carl Reinecke around 1907 could not be more revealing. Reinecke, born in 1824, is a fascinating figure for understanding early 19th-century performance practices, and his approach aligns with the content of many treatises from Field’s time even more than with the practices of his late years when, already an octogenarian, he recorded his piano rolls.

In Alice Sara Ott’s playing, the 20th-century legacy—and the resulting distance from Field’s era—is evident in other aspects as well. There is virtually no added ornamentation, for example, even though Field is particularly generous in incorporating ornamentation within his melodic lines, making additional embellishments rarely feel necessary even from a 19th-century perspective. There are no improvised introductions, and no elaboration of the final chords. Likewise, the use of syncopated pedal—another hallmark of 20th-century aesthetics—is the rule, deviating not only from the original editions, where pedaling is usually absent, but also from the ingenious and varied effects suggested by Liszt in the Schuberth edition.

The point is that, since Liszt’s time, no one seems to have regarded Field’s music as worthy of the concert hall. A few nocturnes have occasionally entered the repertoire of great pianists, but always sporadically: No. 4 has been immortalized in a fabulous recording by Myra Hess; of the wonderful No. 15 we have an equally wonderful home recording by the unjustly forgotten Ignace Tiegerman. But there is not much more, and the few complete recordings of these 18 nocturnes have always been undertaken by performers without true international recognition. That things were beginning to change became evident in 2016, when Elizabeth Joy Roe (the “Roe” of the media-savvy duo Anderson & Roe) recorded these same 18 nocturnes for Decca. A recording that is curiously antithetical to Alice Sara Ott’s—austere, measured, and focused on extracting all possible density from these pages; the declamation is intense, and the sound warm and broadly uniform, to the point that the stylistic evolution so apparent in this new album remains largely unnoticed, while the sound that the 20th century invented for Chopin is omnipresent.

In Alice Sara Ott’s hands, Field is certainly not the pre-Chopin figure we have always wanted to see in him. And while in some respects his historical positioning emerges more clearly, it is equally true that this is, in every sense, 21st-century music. The sonic world generated here—thanks to technology, meticulous production, but above all, the ingenuity of a performer capable of making all this music meaningful—engages with listening processes that are deeply contemporary. And this makes you wonder how much other music, relegated to the attic of history, is awaiting similar reexaminations. Because yes, you end up thinking: what a wonderful interpreter Alice Sara Ott is. But you also realize, as never before, how magnificent John Field’s compositions are. And if the former may have already been evident from her previous albums, the latter, at least for me, is something new. Here, I admire both the creativity of Field and the creativity of Ott, and I witness once again the power of musical performance when it is undertaken with creativity, imagination, and a fertile dialogue with tradition.