Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin,was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era, who wrote primarily for the solo piano. He gained and has maintained renown worldwide as one of the leading musicians of his era, whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation." Chopin was born in what was then the Duchy of Warsaw, and grew up in Warsaw, which after 1815 became part of Congress Poland. A child prodigy, he completed his musical education and composed many of his works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at the age of 20, less than a month before the outbreak of the November 1830 Uprising.

The Nocturne in E Minor, published posthumously as Op 72 No 1, was composed by Frédéric Chopin for solo piano in 1826. It was Chopin's first composed nocturne, although it was the nineteenth to be published, in 1855, along with two other early works: a funeral march in C minor and three écossaises. The composition features an unbroken line of quaver triplets in the left hand set against a slow melody of minims, crotchets, quaver duplets and triplets. It consists of 57 bars of common time with the tempo given as Andante, quarter note = 69 bpm. The conceptual closeness of the vocal model is especially clear in those passages where Chopin set the melody in parallel thirds, a favorite technique in vocal nocturnes.

The high opus number of this Nocturne is misleading, since the work dates to the earlier part of Chopin's rather short career. The piece was not published until 1855, six years after the composer's death, when it was assigned Op. 72. It may have been written as early as 1827 or been contemporary with Chopin's piano concertos (1829-1830). In any event, it was his first Nocturne and clearly bears the composer's stylistic imprint both in its intimate sense of melancholy and in its lyrical character, traits brimming with a passionate Romanticism, while not yet free of the elegance and leaner sonorities of Classicism.

It opens with a gentle, slowly paced running accompaniment, over which Chopin presents a lovely, sad melody that exudes a strong sense of loss. But as the theme develops, with its considerable and long-breathed secondary material, it grows agitated and conveys a feeling of yearning, briefly building to what seems on the verge of an eruption of passion. But the music retreats to the more gentle, restrained melancholy of the opening and then ends quietly. Lasting just under five minutes, this lesser-known work is very nearly on the same level as Chopin's more popular Nocturnes.

Source: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturne_in_E_minor,_Op. _posth._72_(Chopin)).

Although composed for solo piano, I created this Interpretation of the Nocturne in E Minor (Op. 72 No. 1) for Flute, Oboe & Classical Guitar.