Now I have this conscientious and exquisite work in my hands, Prélude, which contains a series of musical pieces inviting us to define the pianist both for his selection and for his interpretation. If we listen to them attentively, we are revealed the performer's personality. Here is the delicate spirit that is born from the respect for compositions and the art of combining it with a passion which is increasingly evident in him, a more determined and mature, almost daring. The playing of these notes in the hands of Antonio Galera is not based on an exhibition of skills that are no longer questioned but on the talented flow of music, which turns simplicity into poetry and passion into what is most difficult in it's development. (Elvira Lindo, journalist and writer)
On his 2025 album, Canadian star pianist Jan Lisiecki brings the diverse sounds of the prelude to life, highlighting that it is far more than just a curtain-raiser to something else. Frederic Chopin's extraordinary 24 Preludes Op. 28 are inspiration and centrepiece of this recording. For Lisiecki, Chopin was a "master of the short form" who "brought the prelude out of the shadows and into the spotlight." Chopin's pieces are complemented and contrasted with selected preludes by other composers from across three centuries, each representing a pinnacle of achievement in the genre - from Bach, Messiaen, Rachmaninoff to Gorecki. Lisiecki seeks "to showcase the broad possibilities of the humble prelude" that takes "the audience on a musical expedition" through these kaleidoscopic miniatures.
Like Chopin before him, and even more closely Scriabin, Rachmaninoff yielded to the temptation of writing his 24 Preludes, assembling this emblematic number in three stages. It began with a youthful work: the famous Prelude in C-sharp minor. From this root, music deeply anchored in Russian soil, imbued with the Slavic soul to which the composer, later exiled, would remain forever attached, there would spring, a decade later, the Opus 23 set, followed seven years on by Opus 32. These Preludes are like images in an album that Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt invites us to leaf through, sonic paintings whose authentic colours of memory he poetically restores. Far from his native land, which he left for good, Rachmaninoff would never write this way again.
Felix Blumenfeld (1863-1931) was a virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher whose class comprised the likes of Simon Barere, Maria Grinberg and Vladimir Horowitz. But he was also a composer of an oeuvre of breathtaking beauty, originality and sophistication. Even in his mid 20s Blumenfeld began teaching at the St Petersburg Conservatoire but resigned in protest at Rimsky-Korsakov’s dismissal following the senior composer’s support of the protestors killed in the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1905. At length he returned to his post but left for Kyiv on the outbreak of the Russian revolution, and became rector of the conservatoire founded by Mykola Lysenko (where he taught Horowitz). Chopin, Wagner, and other Romantic-era masters all make their presence felt in the surging melodies and passionate harmonies of Blumenfeld’s own music.
Published in 1892 by Belaieff and dedicated to Rimsky-Korsakov’s wife, the Op.17 form a quintessential work of Slavic late Romanticism. They are structured in four books of six preludes, touched with the solemnity of Orthodox chant at points and often aspiring to a grand and tragic idiom despite their relative brevity and tending towards melancholy even in the major-key pieces. The Op.17 Preludes are complemented in this new recording by Blumenfeld’s study for the left hand Op.36 – relatively familiar as an example of the technique and widely promoted by the likes of Godowsky and Lewenthal. The Op.24 Etude de Concert is a dazzling accumulation of piano sonority requiring the deftest of hands and care over voicing to bring its towering chords to life.
Kabalevsky was born in Saint Petersburg in 1904 and soon moved with his family to Moscow where he studied piano at the Scriabin Musical Institute. During his adolescence he already began teaching piano lessons, composing simple pieces for his students and for silent films. In 1925 he entered the Moscow Conservatory as a student of Ab Gol'denvejzera for piano and of N.Y. Mjaskoskij for composition. He graduated in 1930. By the 1930's Kabalevsky was appointed as an assistant instructor of composition at the Moscow Conservatory, and by 1939 he was a full professor. This period until 1942 is considered to be Kabalevsky's strongest. During this time he wrote much incidental music for radio and stage. On this new release, Italian pianist Maria Gabriella Bassi performs his 24 Preludes for Piano Op. 38.
Shostakovich: Piano Sonata No 1, 24 Preludes / Scherbakov
Naxos
CD
$19.99Oct 01, 2003
For a less caustic, more ample-toned, and softer-edged set of Shostakovich Op. 34 Preludes than we usually hear, check out Konstantin Scherbakov. His performances contain many beautiful things. No. 2's whimsical scales and runs magically glide over the bar lines, while No. 9 and No. 12's whirling patterns are impressively controlled and supple--and the pianist articulates the marcato/legato interplay in No. 11 and No. 21 to perfection.
My criticism concerns Scherbakov's arch rubato within certain lyrical pieces. His little holdbacks and gratuitous ritards in No. 8, for example, undermine the effect of the composer's indicated ritards, which the pianist barely observes anyway. And a few exposed wrong notes easily could have been corrected (the E-flat in No. 5, measure 14). Such blemishes, however, do not detract from Scherbakov's compelling pianism.
All the virtues Scherbakov brings to the Preludes equally apply to the composer's gnarly Aphorisms cycle and youthful Three Fantastic Dances. The pianist also sails through the First Sonata's unrelenting polytextural thickets and age-of-steel dissonances with maximum power and minimum struggle. Eleanor Thomason's superb engineering yields one of the finest sounding solo piano discs Naxos has produced. --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com
Rachmaninoff: Piano Sonata No. 1; Preludes Op. 32 / Geniušas
Alpha
CD
$20.99Oct 20, 2023
The pianist Lukas Geniušas has recorded the original version of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Sonata no.1 in the composer’s Swiss home Villa Senar (Sergei & Natalia Rachmaninoff) and on his own piano, an unusually long Steinway & Sons model, presented to the composer and concert pianist by the manufacturer to mark his sixtieth birthday. The difference between the original version of Sonata no.1 and the second version, shorter by more than 100 bars, is not just a question of length, according to Lukas Geniušas: ‘There is a lot lost between the first and second editions. I know it goes against the grain, but I would name this sonata to be one of, if not the best Rachmaninoff’s solo piano work. Its shattering might, its splendor and scale can only be likened to the Third piano concerto, which was written soon after.’ The programme is completed by four preludes from the Op. 32 set.
Explore the cutting-edge fusion of tradition and technology with Preludes Tableaux, the latest album by visionary composer Johannes Motschmann. In this groundbreaking work, Motschmann collaborates with a custom-built AI, uniquely designed and meticulously trained to understand and replicate his distinctive compositional style. This is no ordinary AI; it was created specifically for this project, using a vast dataset of Motschmann's previous works to shape it's creative output. Each track on the album is the result of a dynamic interaction between Motschmann's human intuition and the AI's computational creativity, blurring the lines between human and machine-made music. The result is a compelling blend of organic and synthetic artistry that redefines musical collaboration. To enhance the sonic depth, the album was recorded using iconic analog instruments such as the Steinway D, Yamaha CP 70, Rhodes, and Wurlitzer, creating an immersive and rich soundscape. Alongside Motschmann's original compositions, the album features faithful, original renditions of classical works by Bach, Schonberg, Skrjabin, and Alain, offering a journey that bridges the gap between the historical and the contemporary.
Winner of the Leeds Piano Competition at the age of just twenty, Rafael Orozco exemplified a new generation of virtuoso pianists who favoured musical expression over spectacular display. His Chopin interpretations were truly revelatory, finding poetry not only in the Preludes but also in the Etudes. Remastered from the original tapes in 24-bit/192kHz, this double album captures the rare occurrence of a Spanish pianist tackling two all-encompassing collections in which the essence of Romanticism is distilled - a precious souvenir of the impeccable artistry of a star of late twentieth-century pianism.
After Bach's Goldberg Variations, which won him worldwide honors (including a Diapason d'Or from France's Diapason Magazine), Hannes Minnaar challenges and confronts what has become a 'classic' of the 20th century repertoire: Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues, composed in 1951. Here again, the qualities of his pianism, for which he is recognized as one of the leading musicians of our time, come under the spotlight: the diversity of touch and the suppleness between tension and tranquility to characterize every Prelude and Fugue, the precision of tone, the lack of any affectation, a natural finesse in phrasing and articulation, and a familiarity with the score going hand in hand with a freshness that conjures a sense of improvisation. Here we encounter a new landmark in the crowded field of interpretations of this wonderful music.
