Ensemble: piano solo

Duration: 50’

Year of completion: 2025

Premiere: September 29, 2025. Domonkos Csabay (piano). Győr, Synagogue.

Note: Chopin’s 24 Preludes had occupied my thoughts for a long time when the idea of composing a piano cycle of my own first occurred to me. The tradition represented by Chopin invites us to look both backwards and forwards in time: Bach, Scriabin and Shostakovich, among others, also composed cycles for keyboard instruments encompassing all 24 major and minor keys.

For Bach and Chopin, the system of 24 keys was still a self-evident musical point of departure. But what might this concept mean in the 21st century, when, according to many, we have moved beyond everything – tonality, conventions and genre boundaries? In my solo piano cycle, I seek to rethink my own relationship with each of the keys. At the same time, through a sequence of pieces with widely differing musical characters, I attempt to capture something of the complexity and fragmentation of our contemporary world.

I call the individual pieces not preludes, but postludes. The choice of word refers, in part, to the prefix “post-”, which has become attached to so many concepts over the past decades.

Bach’s preludes were followed by fugues, Chopin’s preludes were followed by – nothing. But what can follow a postlude?

(Balázs Kecskés D.)