As much as I love the Beethoven symphonies, I got to go with Chopin's nocturnes vs. the Beethoven Violin Sonatas as wonderful as they are.

I first heard a couple of the Chopin nocturnes on a Liberace LP while still a teenager. My knowledge of classical music was still so vague in those days that I mistakenly counted Liberace as a classical musician and not as a showman, an entertainer and comedian, who also happened to be a very talented piano player; not concert level but still good.

Anyway, the name of the LP was "Liberace Plays the Classics" and while I found out later that the rest of the tracks by the likes of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky were re-arranged with syrupy string accompaniment, or edited (as Liberace stated, "Classical music with the boring parts left out"); Liberace did play these two Chopin nocturnes as straight unedited classical music.

I thought those nocturnes were beautiful and mysterious.

Later I purchased an LP of Chopin nocturnes by Artur Rubinstein, and now I have the complete nocturnes by Claudio Arrau on CD.

 

Tough call this. Not sure I can split them.

Any thoughts?

Like choosing between one's parents.

 

Nothing tough about it. Chopin's Nocturnes, clearly for me. Although I like Beethoven's violin sonatas a lot better than his cello sonatas, only two of them (5 and 9) are for me in the same ballpark as some of the nocturnes, while there are six sets of nocturnes that I clearly prefer over them: Three Nocturnes op.9, Two Nocturnes op.27, Three Nocturnes op.15, Two Nocturnes op.32, Two Nocturnes op.37, Two Nocturnes op.55.

 

The only VS I like is the kreutzer

so I will go with the Nocturnes

 

The Nocturnes for me; I've never been very enthusiastic about Beethoven's Violin Sonatas.

 

That's like:

Montreal Canadians vs. Boston Celtics.

 

Tough call this. Not sure I can split them.

Any thoughts?

Another question, do you want to split them?