Preludes

Performance artists at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music may work towards the award of a doctorate, the so-called DLA (Doctor of Liberal Arts). For this recital, it is the turn of keyboard students of the Liszt Academy Doctoral School to take to the stage of the Sir Georg Solti Chamber Hall, when they perform various preludes from music literature. But what is a prelude? In a nutshell, it is a short piece of music. In the Baroque period preludes preceded longer series of movements, while in Romanticism the prelude became a character piece in its own right. Bach wrote several of these series and this concert features his Six Little Preludes. Naturally, two other giants of the genre in Chopin and Debussy could not be omitted: both composed two volumes of preludes, each with unusual poetic titles. Also included are three lesser-known series: preludes by the American Gershwin, the Russian Scriabin, and the Catalan-Spaniard Federico Mompou.