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It\u2019s organic, and sounds almost improvised \u2014 except that it is impossibly perfect in every detail. Its soundscape is vast, deep, and richly pianistic, but look at the construction and you\u2019ll see the spare elegance of Bach. It has a loving tenderness, and a longing, that\u2019s unlike anything else, yet seems instantly familiar. And it\u2019s gorgeous.

What is it? Chopin, of course!

\n\n\n\n\n\nFr\xe9d\xe9ric Chopin\n\n\n\n\u25b6\ufe0f\nNocturne Op 15 No 2 (in F sharp major)\n\n\nPaul Cantrell, piano\n\n\n\n\n\n\u2b07\ufe0f\nDownload\n\n\n(4:32 / 5.8 M)\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s nothing quite like learning to play a piece of music to really get inside it. With this one, like many I\u2019ve shared here, I knew it was excellent music before I started learning it \u2014 but once I\u2019m inside it, once I\u2019m feeling through the piece with my own hands and working through its many parts with the microscope of learning, once I really start to \u201cget it\u201d about the music \u2026 it\u2019s just staggering how good it is. It just floors me. I don\u2019t know how much of that comes across in my playing \u2014 certainly I\u2019m only communicating a small shadow of that experience \u2014 but I hope you can share my sense of wonder that we have this music in our world.

In addition to being a masterpiece of music, this is a masterpiece of notation. Thanks to the Sheet Music Archive and the perpetually threatened public domain, there\u2019s a free score for this piece you can download. (It\u2019s not a great engraving, and it has some editorial mangling, but it gives you the idea, at least.) Chopin\u2019s rendering of the ornaments is incredibly nuanced, and the double-stemming in the middle section to create three layers in the right hand is a little touch of genius my fingers are still struggling to realize properly.