In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, pianist Alice Sara Ott was assembling a playlist. Her mood at the time was somewhat dark, and so her playlist would be, too: she began looking for nocturnes — short, characterful pieces evocative of night.
What she found while browsing through her music streaming platforms would end up reshaping the next few years of her life in profound and unexpected ways. The result was the first complete Deutsche Grammophon recording of nocturnes by the 18th Century Irish composer John Field, who is widely credited with inventing that musical form.
It's a collection of pieces that are at times bright and optimistic, at others somber and funereal, and are always amazingly lyrical. For Ott, they're amazing to hear and a revelation to play. To showcase this music's brilliance even more, she worked with a company in her hometown of Munich, Germany to film a series of music videos in an LED cave, creating fantastical settings that highlight the character of each nocturne.
The recording, "John Field: Complete Nocturnes," was released in February, 2025, and it quickly became one of the most popular classical recordings of the year. In December, 2025, Apple Music released a list of the most-streamed classical recordings of the year; Ott's recording was ranked number one. The Boston Globe and the New York Times both rated it as one of the year's best classical recordings. And for Ott herself, it's proof positive of what this whole project is about:
"The beautiful thing about music is, you know, we all experience it and share it together. But each of us, we have our own associations with it. And that's what keeps it so relevant and so alive today."
Shortly after "John Field: Complete Nocturnes" was released, I spoke with Alice Sara Ott about what this music means to her, how she approached the recording and the subsequent tour, and what on earth it's like to record inside an LED cave. Listen to this conversation using the audio player above, and read the transcript below.
TRANSCRIPT (lightly edited for clarity):
Kendall Todd I'm Kendall Todd with WCRB and I'm speaking with Alice Sara Ott, who has released a recording of the complete John Field Nocturnes. Alice, thank you so much for your time today.
Alice Sara Ott Thanks for having me.
Kendall Todd The first thing that I would love to know is why John Field? What drew you to his music and made you want to do this recording?
Alice Sara Ott So it was rather by coincidence, actually. I discovered his music during the COVID-19 pandemic when I wanted to put together a playlist with nocturnes. And I went on streaming platforms and browsed for nocturnes and came across one of the few existing complete nocturne recordings by him. And it was the very first time that I heard them, because I didn't grow up with his music. I knew about his name. I didn't really know his music. So I was hearing this music for the first time and I was pleasantly surprised because most of them, they sounded familiar and nostalgic to me. And it almost felt as if I'd known them since my childhood. And so I got totally obsessed with them. I started to learn them. And at one point I thought it would be really nice to record them.
Kendall Todd I'm really interested in how they sounded familiar and nostalgic to you. Why do you think that is?
Alice Sara Ott It's a good question.They are, first of all, very beautiful pieces. These are melodies you immediately get hooked on and very often they start in a seemingly simple way and you're kind of trapped into thinking that's rather simply structured music, but then he always surprises you with an unexpected turn in harmony, in rhythm, and he is actually a master of ornamentation. So you can really hear what a great performer and pianist he must have been, because he very often uses very simple harmony and then he builds up this ornamentation and cascades in the right hand. And the way he uses timing, for example, is very specific. And, I don't know, I mean, to me, it felt like I was listening to music that I had heard in my childhood. So they have this certain color of nostalgia. But at the same time, they also have something that feels very modern. And I had to very often think about minimal music too, although, I mean, minimal music didn't exist at that time. But it has also something very modern and I think that's why it also speaks to people today.
Kendall Todd I'm also really interested in the fact that you discovered these pieces during the COVID pandemic. How did these help you cope with what was going on at the time?
Alice Sara Ott So I was in this little kind of down mood, and that's why I wanted to put together this playlist with nocturnes, because I thought they would match my mood. And then it was really interesting that these pieces, you know, it starts very simple, and then he touches fragments of emotions in these nocturnes, so there are-- there's this sadness, there is agony, there is joy. All these emotions are in there but you kind of like touch them briefly. You always get released with a very light heart. So it's in a way very uplifting and still very profound and intimate. And there is a deep quality in this music, but still it doesn't drag you down. And that's what I experienced. So actually it was uplifting to spend time with this music and to play this music. And I just kept smiling.
Kendall Todd Do you find yourself returning to them now, like even now when you have moments where you need a moment of uplift?
Alice Sara Ott Well, I'm touring this program at the moment, so it's part of my life. I mean, I've spent so much time with them and it's really wonderful to now share it with a live audience. I find myself always watching the audience. What I like to do on stage is to really see the faces of people with whom I'm sharing the music. And it's very rewarding for me to see that they go through the same kind of experience as many of them hear this music for the first time. And you see how they close their eyes and they start smiling. And that was exactly what I went through. So it's really beautiful to see that it has the same effect on other people.
Kendall Todd Something that I think is really charming about these pieces is how different they all are from each other while still being nocturnes. And I hear a lot of moments where I think, like, "Oh, he's having fun." Is it also fun for you to play these?
Alice Sara Ott I mean, they're actually quite challenging. Some of them are really, really challenging to play. You can see what a great pianist he must have been. But yes, I mean, there are so many that are not typical night pieces. Unfortunately, we like to categorize things and put them into a certain drawer. And we always associate a nocturne with like this, like very kind of calm, meditative night piece. But many of these pieces are the opposite of it. And for example, there is this Nocturne No. 12. It has the extra title, "Noontide." And at the end, there's this note that is struck 12 times and he writes in the score, "Like a bell." So you are supposed to imitate the chime of a bell, and during the recording, we experimented a lot because I wanted to have the sound of this old grandfather's clock, that kind of you associate with a siesta. So after having lunch, you kind of doze away and you hear this grandfather clock somewhere in the house, and that's the feeling that I get from this piece at the very end. Many of these pieces have very visual characters, I find. It was really nice for me to build my own story while working on these pieces.
Kendall Todd I'm so glad you brought up [Nocturne] No. 12 because I am so curious about how you got that clock sound.
Alice Sara Ott So, I mean, it's only possible in a recording, unfortunately, not for the live performances. I worked with this really wonderful piano technician, Michel Brandjes, and he always comes up with amazing ideas. So I told him, "Michel, I really want to have the sound that gives you this nostalgic, 'back in those days' kind of bell sound." And we opened up the piano, we took the lid away, and we experimented with different options. We also took out one of the piano hammers and used that as a mallet on the strings. That was a really nice effect as well, but that was not the sound we were looking for. So in the end, I actually muted with my thumb one of the strings and played the note three octaves higher. And that was how we created, actually, this sound and then we had to dub it with the original sound. Without today's technology, it wouldn't be possible. But that's the fun part that can happen in a recording.
Kendall Todd I've also found that listening to all of these nocturnes as a set is quite a different experience than listening to them one by one. Is that something that you've experienced as well? What do you think makes the difference?
Alice Sara Ott I don't think that there is necessarily a specific order in which you should listen to these nocturnes. And also, depending on the edition and the publisher, the numbers of these Nocturnes vary. And I very often get comments like, yeah, "You say this is Nocturne No. 9, but I know it as a different number and a different key." Therefore I used as my orientation the edition that the composer Franz Liszt edited and published in 1859. He was a great admirer of John Field's music and made the great effort to collect these nocturnes and to edit them and to publish them. So that's my orientation. And I thought about first like changing the order, but it didn't really matter that much. I think with these nocturnes, they can stand on their own, obviously. But also together they make sense. And I love how the perspective of a piece changes depending on the context. So in my concerts, of course, because I cannot play all 18 nocturnes, I'm combining nine nocturnes with sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven. And there I had to think a lot about the order. But for the recording, it was not that important. I just decided to take it the way how Liszt had collected it and put it together and it made sense to me.
Kendall Todd How does pairing them with Beethoven change the way that you that you play these or approach them?
Alice Sara Ott When I knew that I was going to record these nocturnes, I also knew that the name John Field was not enough to fill the halls for the live concerts. So I was thinking about a composer to pair these nocturnes with. I didn't want to take Chopin, that might have been the obvious choice, but I really wanted to avoid Chopin. I thought about Mozart, about Liszt a little bit, but then I decided to go with the composer that I thought the most about when I listened to these nocturnes the first time and that was Beethoven. So Beethoven and John Field, they were contemporaries and they even had lessons with the same teacher, although there's no proof that they had ever met. And both are composers who have changed music history. I mean, Beethoven, like he pushed the boundaries and was a revolutionary composer. And John Field has invented this form of music that didn't exist before and is still today one of the most beloved forms of music. And so both have influenced music history and changed music history, but one is this immortal being now and the other one has become a forgotten figure. And when you listen to their music, there's lots of similarities, surprising similarities, but of course also significant differences. And I thought it would be nice to guide the audience through these differences and similarities musically, but also... I'm speaking in my concert, so I'm moderating through the concert, and somehow it works really well.
And, for example, there's even a funny coincidence, because when I heard Nocturne No. 9 in E minor by John Field for the first time, I immediately think of the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, because of the triplets. Both pieces start with these triplets, and have also the dotted rhythm, this dum-pa-dum, which is an element of a funeral march. It totally... Like the mood matches because also the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata is not a romantic piece at all. Very often we think of these moonlit scenery, but the title was not given by Beethoven himself, and Beethoven was actually inspired by a scene of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni in which Don Giovanni kills the Commendatore. So it's a cynical, sinister, macabre scene and once you hear that or have that in your head, you can't hear the first movement of Beethoven as a romantic piece anymore. I cannot un-hear these similarities. So it was really exciting for me to go through these pieces and to discover these similarities and then to also realize where the great differences are between these composers.
Kendall Todd I'm interested that you brought up Chopin, that you didn't want to pair these with Chopin. How do you approach Chopin's nocturnes, which are so famous and so well known, compared to the John Field nocturnes which are less familiar but originated the whole thing?
Alice Sara Ott I do not compare these. I mean, I obviously played Chopin's nocturnes way earlier, so I'm very familiar with those nocturnes, and John Field's nocturne was like they were something new to me. It's very interesting because some of these nocturnes, when you start playing it, for example Nocturne number, I think it's No. 8 in E flat Major, you can totally hear where these famous nocturnes from Chopin came from. So, like, you actually see all the ideas that Chopin took from John Field and where he got the inspiration from. And that was nice to kind of discover, but I do not compare those. I hear this comparison very, very often. And I always think in a way it's not really necessary because it's, you can't compare these. And without John Field, Chopin wouldn't exist in the way we know it now. And it's not an either-or, and I don't think that one is better than the other. There are just very different worlds.
Kendall Todd I'd love to hear about the multimedia aspects of this project, because you have filmed a bunch of music videos, and I believe a longer documentary about recording these pieces, and what inspired you to take on that multimedia aspect?
Alice Sara Ott Because there's not much known about John Field and not many people know his music either, we thought it would be really nice to also document it in a visual way. And I collaborated with the tenor, Andrew Staples, who is also an amazing cinematographer. And we just wanted to film some of these nocturnes in the recording studio, but then also find another visual narrative. And so Andy came up with the idea of filming it in an LED cave. And there is this place near my hometown, Munich in Germany, where there's this former military airport and one of these hangars there is an LED cave. So it's basically a 240 square meters LED screen wall and ceiling as well. And you can create any kind of world, like project on it.
This was for me, in a way, a dream come true because with my instrument, I'm stuck at the position where I am. I cannot move freely around. So being able to recreate nature, recreate any kind of place in the world, but also create a non-existing world was something very exciting for me. So we kind of exchanged moods and associations we had with these nocturnes and then put together a mood board and then shared it with the team of these LED studio. And they then said what's possible, what's not possible and created and designed elements of a world according to what we had imagined. And so we, for example, for one of the nocturnes, we had this snow world where it looks as if the piano is placed on a frozen lake and then there's snowstorm going around. And for another nocturne, we had this post-apocalyptic, neon world, where I took the inspiration from one of the video games that I love to play.
It was really nice and exciting to work on this. And for me, the main part of my job is to study, understand, and honor the past. But I think it's also equally important to make it speak to the people of today and within the context of the world we live in. As classical musicians, we very often tend to focus and make a gatekeeping tradition, and we become afraid to step outside the frame. But I'm more interested in asking, how can we make this music resonate now and share it with today's audience? And I really think that there are so many possibilities and I'm interested in also discovering new tools and then find a way to incorporate them in a way that helps me to enhance the emotions that I want to share through the music.
Kendall Todd This LED cave, while you're playing, are you seeing the scenery that you've created around you?
Alice Sara Ott Yes, partly. It is optimized for the camera. So the camera actually sees it better than what I'm... So it was really amazing to see how great it looked on camera. And I mean, of course I could see parts of it and it was amazing to be there, but I think it was really designed for the cameras. So being there in this cave, it felt like being in an LED cave and it didn't feel like you were in the surreal world. But it was a really amazing experience. We only had one day, so we had to be really quick with everything. But at the same time, everybody in the team was super flexible and we even changed little things in this designed world last minute. So it was very exciting to work on that.
Kendall Todd I am also really interested in the inspiration behind each of these music videos. You said one was inspired by a video game that you love. How did you assign which concept to which nocturne?
Alice Sara Ott For example, [Nocturne] No. 9, it has this distance between left and right hand and it feels very cold. And so first we wanted to create like an apocalyptic world in which you have frozen people in ice, but it's not easy to recreate people. So we had to kind of get rid of that idea. And then we came up with this snow world and the frozen lake. And it was also beautiful for me because it kind of also translated these two dimensions. And for the second nocturne, it is kind of an homage for me to my mother's home country, Japan, and to the pop and folk music from the 1970s that I really love. Because in Japanese language, lots of things are expressed in between the lines, so it's about subtle nuances. And it's almost as if you're walking through a night town, and passing all these neon signs. And there is this anonymity in it, and still it has something you connect to. And in this music, I had to always think of this video game called "Stray" that I played, where a little cat is the protagonist in this post-apocalyptic world full of robots, and obviously it has to save the world, and it just reminded me of that. So the beautiful thing about music is, you know, we all experience it and share it together. But each of us, we have our own associations with it. And that's what keeps it so relevant and so alive today.
Kendall Todd Alice Sara Ott, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.
Alice Sara Ott Thank you so much for having me.
