John Burge (b. 1961, Dryden, Ontario) is a Canadian composer who has been teaching at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario since 1987. He has written a large body of vocal, chamber, and orchestral compositions, and received the 2009 JUNO Award for Classical Composition of the Year. Some critics have likened his compositional style to that of Benjamin Britten and Maxwell Davies. Philip Chiu is acclaimed for his brilliant pianism, sensitive listening, and a stage presence that eschews the hermit-pianist image in favour of openness, authenticity, and connection with audiences. Inaugural winner of the Mecenat Musica Prix Goyer, Chiu has become one of Canada's leading musicians through his infectious love of music and his passion for creation and communication. Given the number of precedents in the world of Classical music, it is fair to state that there is a long traditional of composing a set of Twenty-Four Preludes for solo piano. John Burge's preludes draw their primary influence from Chopin's Opus 28 set in that Burge also composes one prelude in each major and minor key, employing the exact same ordering of keys used by Chopin. While Chopin was writing music in the highly chromaticized harmonic language of the early 19th century, in 2015, the year that Burge completed his set, the concept of tonality has undergone so many developments since Chopin's time that there are now whole schools of musical techniques that produce music that is quite atonal. As an all-governing principle for his set of preludes though, Burge made it a personal requirement that each prelude had to embrace it's tonic key in a decisively audible fashion.

Tracklist:

24 Piano Preludes: No. 1 In C Major
24 Piano Preludes: No. 2 In A Minor "Bells In Winter"
24 Piano Preludes: No. 3 In G Major "Playground Games"
24 Piano Preludes: No. 4 In E Minor
24 Piano Preludes: No. 5 In D Major "Linear Reverberations"
24 Piano Preludes: No. 6 In B Minor "Off-Beat Waltz"
24 Piano Preludes: No. 7 In A Major
24 Piano Preludes: No. 8 In F-Sharp Minor
24 Piano Preludes: No. 9 In E Major "The Singing Clock"
24 Piano Preludes: No. 10 In C-Sharp Minor
24 Piano Preludes: No. 11 In B Major "The Autoharp"
24 Piano Preludes: No. 12 In G-Sharp Minor "Das Thema"
24 Piano Preludes: No. 13 In F-Sharp Major "One-Note Ostinato"
24 Piano Preludes: No. 14 In E-Flat Minor
24 Piano Preludes: No. 15 In D-Flat Major "Polytonality"
24 Piano Preludes: No. 16 In B-Flat Minor "The Hummingbird"
24 Piano Preludes: No. 17 In A-Flat Major "The Aeolian Harp"
24 Piano Preludes: No. 18 In F Minor
24 Piano Preludes: No. 19 In E-Flat Major "The Deadline"
24 Piano Preludes: No. 20 In C Minor
24 Piano Preludes: No. 21 In B-Flat Major
24 Piano Preludes: No. 22 In G Minor
24 Piano Preludes: No. 23 In F Major "Spring Thaw"
24 Piano Preludes: No. 24 In D Minor "La Fin"

UPC: 773811273191
Label: Centrediscs
Release Date: 11.1.19
Format: CD

Burge / Chiu - Twenty-Four Preludes (CD)