Until receiving a batch of CDs of Roger Woodward’s playing
I wouldn’t have associated him with anything other than contemporary
music, and possibly Chopin least of all. In fact, these works
have been at the heart of his repertoire for his entire career,
but it was only at the age of 63 that he felt the time was right
to preserve his interpretations for posterity. Why did it take
so long? “It takes that long”, was Woodward’s response, “Chopin
gives us the questions but he doesn’t give us the answers.”
As with all of these solo pieces, there is no single answer
to the questions posed. The quest will always go on, even when
great pianists of the past such as Rubinstein and more recently
Maria João Pires (Deutsche Grammophon) have covered the ground
so sublimely before. Pires is very much a case in point. Where
her readings push the boundaries in terms of the drama and intensity
to be found in these works, Woodward is to be found shining
a more reflective light on the music – both equally valid points
of view, and each with their strengths and potential weaknesses.
I find Pires wears me out after a while, unbeatably impressive
though her recordings are. I’ve somehow never managed to square
the circle which has me thinking that Nocturnes should have
something of ‘the night’ in them – for all the turbulence which
this can imply. Woodward certainly does not shy from the drama
and strife in a piece such as the Nocturne Op.15 No.1,
and the beautiful contrast between the storm of the opening
and the enigmatic, suspended calm of the melody with which the
piece concludes is done with tremendous élan.
The commentary on the Celestial Harmonies website sums up the
overall impression of these recordings very well indeed: “This
not just steel-fingered virtuosity, it’s looking deeply into
the hidden layers of these remarkable works, trying to sound
out what it all means, reading between the lines, listening
to the silence between the notes, playing it all in the most
thoughtful way. It avoids the obvious, it looks for understanding
rather than outward effect.” These comments also further emphasise
the poetic nature of Roger Woodward’s approach, something which
is rather subjective, and taken cynically might also be read
as ‘freedom to muck about with the tempi’. Listening to a drier,
arguably less poetic recording from 1976 by Garrick Ohlsson
as part of the EMI
200th Anniversary Edition, and we hear a pianist
coming in with consistently more compact timings, the difference
frequently hovering around the minute mark. The benefits of
this are more of a feeling of dance in those pieces with that
as an inherent characteristic, but also with a different kind
of cohesion in the melodic lines. With less meditative tempi
a pianist will more often than not solve some of the problems
of ‘questions’ with which we were confronted at the top of this
review. What Roger Woodward does so well is preserve the illusion
of line, working on the imagination by drawing us in and making
us ‘believe’ – something which all pianists have to do, a true
legato line not being in the nature of an instrument for which
every separate note has its own set of levers and countless
other mechanical bits and pieces. Take the remarkable Nocturne
Op.48 No.1 in C minor, over which Woodward takes 6:27 to
Ohlsson’s 5:49. The opening line is drawn out over an accompaniment
which is fractured by some subtle pedalling, so that it is easy
to hear that deceptive melody as a violin line, pure and refined,
over a kind of pizzicato bass. This melody emerges triumphantly
after the heroic turmoil of the central section, becoming an
entire body of instruments in comparison to the solo of the
opening. These qualities are built into the way the music is
written, but it takes a true master to turn a true masterpiece.
These recordings are the kind which grow on one. It took me
a little while to be convinced, but the more I return the more
I want to hear, which has been the opposite of my experience
with Pires’s stunning but, to my ears, ultimately over-cooked
performances. There are one or two moments where the consistency
of Woodward’s approach might be called into question. There
is that beautifully lyrical opening to the F minor Nocturne
Op.55 No.1 which Woodward takes almost too semplice,
indeed letting the music speak for itself, but with a rather
unexpected lack of the kind of ‘soul’ we have in so many of
the other pieces. The experience of making the recording
has its own effect on those involved, and Woodward’s own statement
at the time reveals the kind of two-way energies which one can
feel from these very fine recordings: “Somehow I’m not playing
them anymore; they are now playing me.” If there was any kind
of music which you would prefer to have in the driving seat
of a Hamburg Steinway D with ivory keys, then it’s Chopin’s
Nocturnes.
Dominy Clements
see also review by Jonathan
Woolf
Track listing
CD 1
Trois Nocturnes Op. 9 (1832)
B flat minor [6:07]
E flat major [6:15]
B major [6:34]
Trois Nocturnes Op. 15 (1833)
F major [5:07]
F sharp major [3:44]
G minor [5:56]
Deux Nocturnes Op. 27 (1836)
C sharp minor [5:30]
D flat major [6:29]
Deux Nocturnes Op. 32 (1837)
B major [5:49]
A flat major [5:59]
CD 2
Deux Nocturnes Op. 37 (1840)
G minor [7:32]
G major [7:09]
Deux Nocturnes Op. 48 (1841)
C minor [6:27]
F sharp minor [7:37]
Deux Nocturnes Op. 55 (1844)
F minor [5:07]
E flat major [5:14]
Deux Nocturnes Op. 62 (1846)
B major [8:41]
E major [6:15]
Nocturne Op. post. (1827?)
E minor [4:01]
Lento con gran espressione [Nocturne] Op. post. (1830)
C sharp minor [4:08]
Nocturne Op. post. (1847/8)
C minor [2:49]
Roger Woodward (piano) 
