

Welcome to The Works, the playlist featuring the latest and best from the world of classical music. At the top of this week’s playlist, pianist Alice Sara Ott offers a tasty sample from her new recording of the complete Nocturnes by John Field, which includes a less than orthodox musical effect. “The Nocturne in E Major has this title, ‘Noontide’,” Ott tells Apple Music Classical, “and at the very end there’s this note that’s played 12 times. There is no instruction in the music on how you are supposed to play that, but given the title it obviously suggests something like a bell—so I wanted a particular sound that sounded like an old grandfather clock. I had the incredible luck to work with one of the most creative of piano technicians, Michel Brandjes. You’d just try to explain to him the sound world that you're imagining, and then he comes up with ideas. We started to experiment, and even took out a mallet from the piano and used that as a hammer, but that was not the sound that we were looking for. In the end, it turned out that the best way to create that sound was to actually touch the string as I played it, so that it creates an overtone—I actually reached into the piano and touched the string to create the effect while playing the note two or three octaves lower than written. So we recorded that separately and used it as an overdub.” The Works is updated regularly by our editors, so if you find a piece of music or performance you love, make sure you add it to your library.