24 Preludes for Piano

24 Preludes for piano dates from the final phase of Ilja Zeljenka’s creative career. The cycle was composed in November and December 2005, and its first complete performance was given by Magdaléna Bajuszová. During the last decade of Zeljenka’s life, she became his preferred pianist, thanks to a rare combination of interpretative qualities: an exceptional ability to understand and render complex polyrhythmic structures with precision, a rigorous, unsentimental, and unromantic approach to the musical text, combined with a refined tonal culture and a keen sensitivity to colour and sound.

The Preludes may be viewed as a survey of the textures and types of musical motion that characterize Zeljenka’s compositional language in its most concentrated and essential form—perfectly lucid, stripped of any need to prove itself, and free from superfluous ornamentation or rhetorical display.