Melodiya presents a premiere of a unique work of 20th-century Russian music – 24 Preludes and Fugues by Vsevolod Zaderatsky.

A composer, pianist and conductor, Zaderatsky was heavily persecuted by the Soviet regime, suffering arrests, imprisonments, Gulag, exiles… However, nothing could crush the man’s mighty craving for creation; he wrote his most substantial work in the period of 1937 to 1939 in a prison camp in Kolyma using telegraph forms as music paper.

A representative of Taneyev’s school, Zaderatsky revived Bach’s tradition, even before the likes of Hindemith and Shostakovich created their cycles of preludes and fugues. Here, the time-honoured form is combined with a quite peculiar interpretation of “tonal” thinking. At the same time, the composer’s style is a synthesis of the most significant achievements in the music of the first half of the last century. Vsevolod Zaderatsky’s works began to draw attention of musicians and the public as late as the 21st century.

The 24 Preludes and Fugues were performed entirely for the first time in 2014 in Moscow. Now they have been put on record by a group of young pianists, prize-winners of international competitions and prominent representatives of performing art of their generation. We are pleased to present Ksenia Bashmet, Yuri Favorin, Nikita Mndoyants, Lukas Geniušas, Andrei Gugnin and Andrei Yaroshinsky.