24 Preludes Op 34 (1933)

In the early stages of his career Shostakovich was as ambitious as a pianist as he was as a composer. In spite of precocious international success with his First Symphony in 1926, he devoted at least as much time in his early twenties to performance as he did to composition, winning a Certificate of Merit in the first International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1927 and undertaking concert tours to various parts of the Soviet Union. He did, however, contrive to combine the two interests by enlarging his recital repertoire with his own compositions, like the First Piano Sonata Op 12 and the Aphorisms Op 13. His next two piano works, the Twenty-Four Preludes Op 34 and the First Concerto Op 35, both date from 1933 when he was drawn back to the concert platform after an extended period of work on the score of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

Completed in just over two months – sometimes at the rate of one a day –Shostakovich’s Twenty-Four Preludes are obviously a more systematic collection than Rachmaninov’s, which were written over a period of nine years. In fact, they are much closer to Chopin’s Op 28 and Scriabin’s Op 11 both in their tonal organisation (following a cycle of fifths through all the keys from C major and A minor to F major and D minor) and in their brevity. At the same time they are not as highly charged in subjective emotion as any of the comparable sets. While they are less overtly satirical than the Aphorisms, among the other sentiments so elusively touched on here there is more than a hint of irony – as in the combination of an Alberti bass and a Chopinesque chromatic line at the beginning of Prelude No 1. But, although it soon goes harmonically astray, returning to the point only just in time, there is a lyrical element here too. After the fantastic little dance of No 2, there is more poetry in the nocturnal musings of No 3 – except, that is, in the assault by alien harmonies towards the end. A similar intrusion, though not so violent, at a similar point in No.4, a three-part fugue, heightens rather than devalues its linear and textural beauty.

In No.5, a brilliant moto perpetuo, the left hand seems to be struggling to catch up with the right, succeeding only at the very end. It has a small consolation when it grasps the tune of the sarcastic polka (or is it a march?) of No.6 and a much better one when it introduces and sustains the expressive melody of No.7. Prelude No.8 awards the melodic interest to the right hand, over a mechanical accompaniment in the left, until the roles are reversed near the end. In No.9, however, they are both tested by the breathless activity of a wild tarantella. While the image reflected in the sweetly melodious nocturne of No.10 is clearly that of Chopin, who has been present for most of the time in one way or another, the impulse behind the next three Preludes – the gigue of No.11, the toccata of No.12, the rustic bourrée of No.13 – seems to come, distantly, from J.S.Bach.

Prelude No 14 in E flat minor, an unexpectedly passionate funeral lament, stands apart from the rest and is a welcome haven of seriousness before the quick waltz of No 15, the march of No 16 and the mazurka of No.17, which last clearly restores Chopin to his place as tutelary genius. Bach is back perhaps with the two-part invention of No.18, which most effectively offsets the melodious barcarolle of No.19. After an outburst of anger in No.20, there are two highly contrasted waltzes, No.21 in piquant quintuple time, No.22 recalling Chopin again in its eloquent cello-like left hand. No.23 is a strange inspiration, ingeniously accommodating a firmly articulated melody in octaves between the triplet figuration in the right hand and the sustained harmonies low in the left.      The last Prelude in the set begins like a Prokofiev neo-classical gavotte but includes, in its rolling left-hand arpeggios, a timely reminder of Chopin before the end.

Shostakovich’s true tribute to J.S.Bach was to be the 24 Preludes and Fugues which he would write in honour of the 200th anniversary of his death in 1950.