Antonio Galera - Prélude (2019) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

A prelude generally precedes something but, in music, it is also a sort of separate piece that itself reveals all its relevance. Some examples are very clear in this album by Antonio Galera which contains more than just preludes. By adding them to the album, Galera creates a kind of implicit and explicit context of historical review about the meaning of a term which is at the same time an announcement, a complement of what is to come (Johann Sebastian Bach and Dmitri Shostakovich) and a unit (Chopin, Scriabin and Rachmaninov). It even serves as a starting point for a more complex formal conception considering thematic or structural aspects (Cesar Franck). Yet, there is another vision of the prelude as a pretext, as a composition whose lack of formality is worth the paradox. This form gives it the possibility of going beyond its possible technical approach, knot and denouement, and its own mechanism. This is what happens in Debussy’s Preludes which, further than the use of the term as a mean for their writing, appeal to a more or less detailed description of their content. Liszt would have done it with his Études d’Exécution Trascendante, despite the fact that the former is, in effect, a Prelude, and the latter is a Study in F minor. Interestingly, these Preludes by Debussy could be placed alongside other works by the author himself in which he does not use this name, but Images or Estampes, in which the vignettes composing them are linked by a generic title, a much more evocative one than the so little significant Preludes.

Tracklist:
1. Prelude & Fugue in E-Flat Minor, BWV 853: I. Prelude 04:30
2. Prelude & Fugue in E-Flat Minor, BWV 853: II. Fugue 05:49
3. Prélude, Choral & Fugue, FWV 21: I. Prélude 05:00
4. Prélude, Choral & Fugue, FWV 21: II. Choral 07:45
5. Prélude, Choral & Fugue, FWV 21: III. Fugue 07:29
6. Préludes, Book 1, L. 117: No. 2, Voiles 04:37
7. Préludes, Book 1, L. 117: No. 6, Des pas sur la neige 04:52
8. Préludes, Book 1, L. 117: No. 7, Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest 04:00
9. Préludes, Book 1, L. 117: No. 8, La fille aux cheveux de lin 02:50
10. Préludes, Book 1, L. 117: No. 10, La cáthedrale engloutie 06:40
11. Piano Sonata, Op. 1: Choral et variations 10:46
12. Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 645 (Arr. F. Busoni for Piano) 04:15

Personnel:
Antonio Galera, piano