Although it is customary to view John Field as an innocent forerunner of Chopin, his music was undoubtedly advanced for its time. A general air of amiability is often touched by a spirit of adventure. Field was in any case unimpressed with Chopin, mistaking his genius for morbid introspection (''a sick-room talent'') and was no less short with Liszt's flamboyance. Liszt, however, shrewdly and enthusiastically endorsed what he saw as Field's genuine gift; for him the Nocturnes represented ''the morn of life... before the radiant freshness of emotion was over-clouded by the shadow of reflection''.
As luck would have it, the two records under discussion are complementary, each offering a radically different viewpoint to the other. For a start, John O'Conor performs on a modern, beautifully warm-toned Steinway while Richard Burnett, most enterprisingly, chooses historic instruments selected to coincide with the dates of the compositions he plays. Admittedly even the finest of his historic pianos makes ''a calm and easy brilliance with a smooth singing style'' (an ideal mentioned in the notes accompanying O'Conor's disc) hard to achieve. Yet if Burnett's performances are hardly models of refinement they are exceptionally characterful and energetic. In the First Sonata (the only work duplicated on the Telarc disc) he is altogether more vigorous and rapid than O'Conor, relishing the near Beethovenian drive and propulsion in the development. What delightful joie de vivre, too, he finds in the popular concluding Rondo, an endearing sense of Irish high-jinks that will set even the least susceptible heads nodding and feet tapping. The Variations are surprisingly uninventive (in the one on a Russian Air Burnett is admirably partnered by Lorna Fulford) and the brief but gently lumbering La danse des ours could tempt those on the look out for unusual encores.
John O'Conor, returning from his recordings of Mozart concertos and Beethoven sonatas to less demanding fare, could hardly offer a more urbane alternative. There were admittedly times when I longed for something more vivid and articulate, yet for the most part O'Conor's suave command and unruffled expertise win the day. Certainly you could never accuse him of exaggeration or heavy drama, and even Field's occasional fortissimo demands fail to lure him from his gentle course. As supreme instances of his artistry I would urge you to hear his way with the delightfully quaint, elfin dance allegretto from the C minor Sonata, and the con espressione (at 2'38'') of the B major Sonata. I would have liked a greater separation of melody and chiming accompaniment in the Seventh Nocturne (my own particular favourite), something achieved with a more emphatic drama by Miceal O'Rourke on his Chandos set of the Nocturnes. But elsewhere you could hardly ask for greater warmth, sustained beauty of tone and line or more uncontaminated music-making. This record joins John O'Conor's early sets of the Nocturnes (Telarc, 5/90) and concertos (Onyx—nla) to form an invaluable salute to Ireland's most celebrated composer.
Both discs are well recorded (a tricky task for Amon Ra, involving different instruments and perspectives) and both have excellent accompanying notes by Steven Ledbetter and Richard Burnett himself. Burnett also thoughtfully includes a postscript explaining that his choice of versions and alternatives—frequent in Field—was governed by purely musical considerations.'