Night Stories

This is indeed a beautiful album for that time of day when lights are low and the cacophony of the world is somewhere else. It is a nice mix of the familiar (sometimes overly familiar) and the unfamiliar. It is the latter that makes the album unique. I have about half of these tracks in multiple other renderings from Cliburn to Kempff. One note, however, as of this writing the final two tracks have the “song” names reversed — a first in my iTunes experience.

The premise of this recording, subtitled “Nocturnes”, is of pieces suited for the late night, works that belong in the late evening hours and that are reflective and that stir the soul. For the most part, I find myself less than pleased with such recordings, but Ms. Lin has chosen a very good collection of works that establish a mood path that makes this difficult to play in the background while doing other things at the same time. And the quality of her performance is striking and stirring. Her Debussy is soft yet strongly felt at the same time, and the two Chopin selections (Nocturne No. 1 and Nocturne No. 13) are extremely well played, capturing the unique essence at the core of these driven and gentle Chopin works. This listener was also extremely pleased with Grieg’s Nocturne Op. 54, No. 4, as well as Griffes’ “The Night Winds, Op. 5, No. 3”. The recording closes with a fine rendition of Liszt’s Liebestraum. The other Nocturnes on the CD are also well performed, but those were the standouts that captured my attention. I expected that I would be able to put this CD on in the background and do other things while listening, but that proved not to be the case, as there were too many interludes where I had to just pause and listen to Ms. Lin’s interpretation. This recording turned out to be a very pleasing thing indeed, and I do indeed recommend it.

The album title itself is a bit mis-leading, but the overall impression one gets is wonderful. Lin does it again.-Bz