10 Preludes for violin and piano from Op.46 (1999)

No.1 in C major: Adagio mortale

No. 18 in F minor:    Agitato

No. 19 in E flat major: Moderato

No. 20 in C minor:    Tragico

No.12 in G sharp minor: Adagio

No.14 in E flat minor: Presto    –   

No. 15    in C sharp minor: Adagio sognando

No. 16 in B flat minor: Misterioso

No. 23 in F major: Andante

No. 24 in D minor: Presto

One of the last musicians to defect from the Soviet Union – she was touring the USA as a teenage prodigy pianist at the time –    Lera Auerbach has had a phenomenally successful career since she settled in New York in 1991. After adding degrees from the Juilliard School of Music and the Hanover Hochschule für Musik to her already formidable Soviet qualifications, she has thrived not only as a pianist and composer but also (writing in Russian) as a poet, novelist and playwright.

Prominent among her compositions are three sets of 24 Preludes – for piano Op.41, for violin and piano Op.46 and for cello and piano Op. 47, all of them written in 1999. The source of her inspiration in this respect was probably Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes for piano Op.34, five of which she has since transcribed for violin and piano (to complete the series started by Dmitri Tziganov in the 1930s but never actually finished). There is little danger of confusing one for the other, however. A significant Schnittke influence seems to have intervened, making its presence felt in Auerbach’s music not so much in direct echoes as in a similarly liberated imagination. Dedicated, as she has put it, to “re-establishing the value and expressive possibilities of all the major and minor keys,“ she has let no inhibitions constrain her treatment of the instruments involved.

Like the Shostakovich Preludes for piano, all three of the Auerbach sets follow the cycle of fifths, covering in each case the whole tonal spectrum from C major and A minor to F major and D minor. “In writing this work,” she says of the Preludes for violin and piano, “I wanted to create a continuum that would allows these short pieces to be united in a single composition. The challenge was not only to write a meaningful and complete prelude that might be only a minute long, but also for this short piece to be an organic part of a larger composition with its own form.” Obviously, in a performance of only ten of the complete set it is scarcely possible to appreciate this latter aspect of the work. But we are still “looking at something familiar from an unexpected perspective.”    C major, for example, acquires in Prelude No.1 something of the macabre quality of the E flat minor of Ravel’s Le Gibet, at least until the harmonies are clarified in the sustained high-lying violin melody towards the end. There is a spooky element also in the F minor of Prelude No.18 where, however, in spite of her insistence on the extremes of the piano keyboard, the composer rarely loses sight of a shapely melodic line.

The next two Preludes in this selection make an interesting pair: the quietly expressive outer sections of No.19 in E flat major are contrasted with a passionate middle section; No.20 in the related key of C minor reverses the situation, the vehemence of the outer sections being relieved by Shostakovich-style irony in the middle. The melodic persistence of No.12 in G sharp minor carries the violin over tolling chords on the piano to the top of its range and almost out of earshot. Propelled by Presto urgency, No.14 in E flat minor culminates in a short violin cadenza and a massive piano chord cluster, which latter is sustained to lead directly into the surreal lullaby of No.15 in C sharp minor. No.16 in B flat minor begins in a sul ponticello whisper and, like No.12, virtually disappears at the end. Nos. 23 and 24 are another highly effective pair: the muted F major Prelude is an intimate confession ; its D minor companion, the last and longest in the set, contrasts virtuoso violin figuration and heavily percussive piano sounds with characteristically attenuated melody near the top of the violin range.