Chopin is a composer who has been with me since I started playing the piano as a child. In Japan, where I grew up, it is impossible to avoid Chopin's music! He is one of the most popular composers for everybody, and all pianists start playing and getting to know his music from a very young age. Therefore, he becomes an essential part of your life very naturally. I have wanted to record the complete Preludes for a long time. It is always very interesting to approach works like this that are conceived as a whole - like the 24 Bach Preludes and Fugues or the Debussy Preludes. Each prelude is individual, and each is in a different tonality so the colour and characters are completely different, and as the structure of each individual prelude is relatively open there is a lot of freedom for interpretation. - Aimi Kobayashi