During the winter of 1839, on the island of Majorca, George Sand was among the very first to perceive the beauty of Chopin 24 Preludes. In her partner's piano playing, she could hear the "language of the infinite" which is expressed here with eloquence and emotion: the Preludes are the inner song of a music lover, weakened by illness and the feeling of exile. With them, Chopin renewed the form, making the prelude independent and drawing a new expression from it. Previously, the genre was often reduced to a short introductory piece, very free in its form. It allowed the instrumentalist to check the tuning of the instrument, to set the initial atmosphere or simply "relax the fingers and feel the keyboard" (Couperin The Art of touching the harpsichord). In Chopin's cycle of preludes, each fragment – up to 30 seconds for the shortest – is the prelude only to the next one, as if it was fixing the melody in the grace of its momentum to make it eternal.
For its 32nd year, the Chopin Festival uses the Preludes op.28 as a thread: from 25 June to 14 July, in the beautiful Orangerie in Parc de Bagatelle in Paris, the programme distills every single prelude – like short atmospheric studies – into nine main recitals. They will be sewn to other major works of the piano repertoire, connected by the same tonality. A tribute to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, the Preludes are also an ode to the tonal system – they cover every key in major and minor modes. To open the festival, Ukrainian artist Valentina Lisitsa will slide the thread into the needle, playing the first of the Preludes in C major. The sixth prelude, in B minor, will set the tone for the second part of her recital, together with the heirs of Chopinesque prelude, Scriabin, Rachmaninov and Liadov.
[Image: 9674.275] There are many Chopin Societies in France and Poland; the Parisian one was created in 1911, by Maurice Ravel among others. It is known for the pilgrimage to the composer's grave it organizes every year in the Père-Lachaise cemetery. For over 32 years, the summer festival has welcomed great names from the pianistic stage; we will hear French pianists Claire-Marie Le Guay, who will bring a contemporary touch to the programme of the festival with Mantovani Papillons, Jean-Claude Pennetier and Alexandre Paley. The latter will perform Franck's Prelude, Chorale and Fugue. Musa Rubackyté and Aimi Kobayaski will share the programme as well. Young pianists Hélène Tysman and Akiko Ebi will both place Debussy – the other major composer of the romantic prelude – in the mirror of Chopin, highlighting the sources of Debussian poetry with great finesse.