🕯️Nocturnes, Op. 9

Three nocturnes, published in 1832, when Chopin was in his early twenties and newly arrived in Paris. The second, in E-flat major, is the one everybody knows without knowing its name.

This is Dad's record. Not his kind of music in general. He liked brass bands and the shipping forecast. But he had this one LP of Chopin, bought for reasons nobody can now supply, and he played it on Sunday evenings while he wrote up the week in his notebooks. The sleeve has his initials on the back in biro, in the top corner, the way he marked his tools.

Played on 2025-02-11-Tuesday, his birthday. It was also the day the load test failed at a third of volume and I sat through a lecture on base rates without hearing it. I came home, put the record on the 📦 Record player without taking my coat off, and stood there for side one.

• The first nocturne is the one I like best, B-flat minor, a right hand that wanders and a left hand that never does.
• The famous second has a crackle through its last half minute where the needle has been lowered too often.
• The third is longer and stormier in the middle. He always got up to make tea during it.

About seventeen minutes for the three. Played again in May when I re-read 🕰️ My father's repair notebooks in the spare room: the same hand that wrote date, fault, part, wrote two initials on a record sleeve.

Mum has offered me the rest of his records twice. I have said not yet twice.