Best resources for learning Chopin

Henle’s nocturnes are €27.50, the National Edition is $29.95, and a Chopin Left Hand study edition is $9 a piece. Kilhamn and Ohlsson teach the pieces on video, Rubinstein, Ashkenazy and Pires recorded the nocturnes, and Alan Walker’s 2018 biography runs to 768 pages.

Study editions

Chopin Left Hand is a PDF of one piece: Chopin’s right hand as written, over one root-position chord per harmony, the chord named above the staff (E♭, B♭⁷, Fm) and numbered below (I, V⁷, ii). Boxed section letters mark the form, a page of analysis closes the file, and a person reviews every piece before it goes on sale. One piece is $9, the Nocturnes are $59, and Lifetime is $199 for every piece now and later.

Urtext editions

Henle’s HN 185, edited by Ewald Zimmermann with Theopold’s fingering, holds all 21 nocturnes and the C♯ minor Lento in two versions across 132 paperbound pages for €27.50, and the critical commentary is a free PDF. The National Edition volume 5A, edited by Jan Ekier and Paweł Kamiński, covers Op. 9 to Op. 62 in 140 pages for $29.95, with a source commentary and a performance commentary on the ornaments, the pedal and Chopin’s harmonic legato. The full comparison with Paderewski, Peters and the Mikuli reprints is in best edition of the Chopin nocturnes.

IMSLP’s Chopin category runs to 127 work pages of free PDF scans, including the old complete editions by Breitkopf & Härtel, Mikuli, Scholtz and Paderewski. Chopin Online, built over two decades by John Rink and Christophe Grabowski at Cambridge and King’s College London, holds some 5,500 images of the first editions and sets the manuscripts beside them in the Online Chopin Variorum Edition.

Simplified versions

Henrik Kilhamn’s Simple Solutions Edition changes the least of the simplified editions, 60 arrangements in five volumes graded 2 to 6 on his 8-point scale, $3.90 to $6.50 a piece. Eight of them are Chopin, from Op. 9 No. 1 and No. 2 to Op. 55 No. 1 and the Raindrop Prelude. The comparison with Alfred and Hal Leonard is in simplified Chopin editions.

Video lessons

Sonata Secrets, Kilhamn’s channel of over 200 videos since 2019, plays each piece with the score on screen and explains what the harmony is doing, and his Op. 9 No. 1 analysis is the one to start with.

tonebase Piano sells more than 40 Chopin courses from Garrick Ohlsson, Emanuel Ax, Seymour Bernstein and Marina Lomazov inside a subscription of $59 a month or $359 a year with a 14-day free trial. Ohlsson, winner of the 1970 Chopin Competition, teaches the G minor Ballade in an hour and also covers the Barcarolle, the Étude Op. 10 No. 1 and the third Scherzo.

Josh Wright, a Doctor of Musical Arts from Michigan and a prizewinner at the 2015 National Chopin Competition, posts free tutorials on YouTube, including a full lesson on Op. 9 No. 2 and a short one on its cadenza. His ProPractice library, more than 500 tutorials over 300 hours with nocturnes, preludes, waltzes, ballades and the études, is $797 for lifetime access.

The Chopin Podcast, hosted by Ben Laude with Garrick Ohlsson in every episode, ran sixteen episodes over two seasons from October 2024 to October 2025, and every episode is still up on the site and on its YouTube playlist. Each episode takes one genre with guests such as Stephen Hough, Emanuel Ax, Alan Walker and Dina Yoffe, so start with the Nocturnes episode and then the Preludes.

Recordings to learn from

Arthur Rubinstein recorded the 19 nocturnes for RCA in 1965, issued in 1967 on RCA Victor Red Seal and now sold as Rubinstein Collection volume 49. Vladimir Ashkenazy recorded the complete solo works for Decca between 1974 and 1984, the first pianist to do so, and Decca reissued them as a 13-CD box in 2010. Maria João Pires recorded all 21 nocturnes for Deutsche Grammophon, released in October 1996, one hour and 49 minutes on two discs.

Books

Alan Walker’s Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018, is the biography, 768 pages built on ten years in the archives in Warsaw, Paris, London, New York and Washington. Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger’s Chopin: Pianist and Teacher as Seen by His Pupils, Cambridge University Press, 1986, gathers what his pupils and contemporaries wrote about his technique, his teaching and his playing, with his own Sketch for a Method as an appendix. Jim Samson’s Chopin in the Master Musicians series, Oxford University Press, 1996, is 322 pages on the life and the music together.

Institutions

The Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw put 39,500 items online free between 2017 and 2020: 500 first editions as PDF and XML scores, the manuscripts, his letters, 30,000 photographs and almost 1,000 hours of recordings. The Institute also runs the Chopin Competition and streamed every session of the 2025 edition, won by Eric Lu, on its YouTube channel, where each round’s full sessions stay up as playlists.

Difficulty and order

The nocturnes ranked by difficulty rates all 21 with each hand on its own, from the C minor B. 108 at level 3 to Op. 48 No. 1 at level 7. Chopin for intermediate and returning adults puts twelve pieces in order, from the Prelude in E minor at level 3 to the Fantaisie-Impromptu at level 7. Which Chopin nocturne to learn first is Op. 32 No. 1, level 4.