Jan Lisiecki – The Power of the Prelude

Lisiecki showcases the rich potential of the prelude,
from Bach and Chopin to Rachmaninoff, Messiaen and Górecki

The pianist’s latest album to be released on 14 March 2025

Listen to Chopin’s Prelude, Op. 28 No. 4 in E minor, Largo here

“Lisiecki plays with gentle judiciousness, aristocratic reserve and a touch
that tends shadowy without losing a core of clarity”

The New York Times, reviewing Lisiecki’s Preludes programme at his Carnegie Hall recital debut in March 2024

Can a recital be composed entirely of preludes, by definition and tradition introductory works, and still be profound? This was the question pianist Jan Lisiecki pondered while conceiving his current recital programme, which forms the basis for his latest Deutsche Grammophon recording. In his capable hands, the answer, clearly, is yes, as listeners will discover from an album that compares and contrasts Chopin’s exceptional Op. 28 cycle with preludes by Bach, Rachmaninoff, Messiaen and Górecki. Jan Lisiecki: preludes comes out in all formats on 14 March 2025. A series of singles will be issued in the run-up to the album release: Chopin’s Op. 28 No. 4 in E minor on 15 November 2024, the Prelude in A flat major, KK IVb/7 on 6 December, and Op. 28 No. 6 in B minor on 24 January 2025, with Rachmaninoff’s Op. 23 No. 5 in G minor following on 25 February.

As Lisiecki notes, it was Chopin who transformed the prelude into a genre in its own right, “embracing its ability to establish a mood and be taken out of context, so to speak”. The 24 preludes of Op. 28, showcasing each key in turn, were the starting point for his recital programme and album and his recent live interpretations have garnered critical acclaim. Reviewing his Wigmore Hall recital in July, Bachtrack hailed “a landmark performance” which “demonstrated the finest qualities of this much admired pianist: a keen poetic sense, good taste and an unflashy technical strength”.

Lisiecki underlines the way in which Chopin set the prelude free by including two more examples by the composer. The album opens with the light and lively Prelude in A flat major, KK IVb/7, and also features the much longer and more meditative Prelude in C sharp minor, Op. 45.

If Chopin was the initial inspiration, Lisiecki’s intention was always to set his preludes in musical and historical context, by examining the way others have imagined the genre. He begins by going back to Bach, whose Well-Tempered Clavier inspired Chopin’s Op. 28. Lisiecki has chosen the first two Preludes from Book I, in C major and C minor respectively. “It was a difficult choice, because I’m merely presenting a glimpse of the vast depth of Bach’s keyboard repertoire,” says the artist. “In his Well-Tempered Clavier, he developed the format of prelude and fugue, but suddenly to listen to these preludes as standalone pieces offers a distinctly different experience, and one that I hope the audience will enjoy.”

Rachmaninoff is an obvious successor to Chopin in taking the prelude and exploiting its standalone potential. Lisiecki plays two works from his Op. 23 set – No. 3 in D minor and No. 5 in G minor, as well as the famous early work in C sharp minor, Op. 3 No. 2. “Chopin and Rachmaninoff both used the piano’s singing quality to create long musical phrases,” notes Lisiecki. “The outstanding technicality in Rachmaninoff is contrasted by his lyricism, his extraordinary ability to write musical lines.”

Messiaen too experimented with the genre as a way of exploring different states of mind, with no introductory intention. He wrote a set of eight Preludes when he was just 20, the first three of which – “La colombe” (“The Dove”), “Chant d’extase dans un paysage triste” (“Song of Ecstasy in a Sorrowful Landscape”) and “Le nombre léger” (“The Light Number”) – are included here.

The most recent works on the album are the first and last of Górecki’s Four Preludes, Op. 1 (1955), previously unknown to Lisiecki. “I always love meeting new composers and finding new pieces – and presenting them to an audience,” he says. On the album, he places Górecki alongside Bach: “The music exudes the same vitality and energy while being of the 20th century, creating juxtaposition between the modern and the traditional.”

Skilfully highlighting these connections and contrasts here, Lisiecki reveals the way in which the genre developed over three centuries. As he concludes, “These other composers’ take on the prelude is so different than what Chopin gives us and I think it completes the album and shows that a prelude can mean more than just one thing.

Jan Lisiecki will give further performances of his Preludes recital in 2025:
20 March – Herbst Theatre, San Francisco · 21 March – Joan and Irwin Jacobs Music Center, San Diego
11 May – BOZAR, Brussels · 25 & 26 May – Brescia & Bergamo International Piano Festival
28 May La Scala, Milan · 31 May – National Theatre, Riga
4 June – Auditori i Palau de Congressos de Castelló, Castellón · 7 June – Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris
5 July – Philharmonie, Essen (Klavier-Festival Ruhr) · 23 September – Auditorio Nacional, Madrid