MAO FUJITA - 72 PRELUDES [2CD]

Format: 2 x CD
Catalogue No.: 19802825762
Barcode: 0198028257626
Release Date: 06 Sep 2024
Genre: Classical

Sony Classical is proud to present ’72 Preludes’; three complete sets of 24 preludes by Chopin, Scriabin, and 20th century Japanese composer Akio Yashiro, released on 2 CD’s 6th of September 2024. Following his ‘consistently impressive’ (Gramophone) traversal of Mozart’s complete Piano Sonatas for Sony Classical - winner of an Opus Klassik Award - Japanese pianist Mao Fujita presents a similarly ambitious project: matching sets of 24 Preludes by three composers, Frédéric Chopin, Alexander Scriabin and Akio Yashiro. In so doing, Fujita unites the Europe in which he now lives with the Japan where he was born and raised. Chopin’s landmark set of 24 Préludes, completed in 1839, was the first work to treat the piano prelude as a self-contained work capable of standing alone. After the model is laid down in Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier, the set traverses every key from C major to D minor, alternating major tonalities with their relative minors. On his new album ‘72 Preludes’, Fujita treats Chopin’s expressive yet elusive cycle as the basis for a dialogue that traverses borders and epochs. In 1884, Russian visionary Alexander Scriabin began work on his own set of 24 Preludes, directly inspired by Chopin’s. Scriabin’s pieces build on the grace and fluency of Chopin’s - also using his key scheme - while showing glimpses of the composer’s emerging radical harmonic and rhythmic character. They suggest that Scriabin, known for music on a huge scale, was an exquisite miniaturist. Mao Fujita - recognized increasingly for his intelligent programming as well as for his affectionate, rooted and deeply poetic playing - was keen to combine these European masterpieces with work from his homeland. Mao Fujita makes his BBC Proms debut on 28 August with the Czech Philharmonic under Jakub Hrůša.