Choveaux: Landscapes - 24 Preludes for Piano

Françoise Choveaux is a composer, but also a pianist, and she continues a musical tradition reaching back to the 19th century. After returning to France from the Juilliard School in New York in 1981, she settled in a small farmhouse in Killem, surrounded by the wind-swept fields of East Flanders. The powerful nature and vast landscapes are an essential part of her life, and thus each of her scores is inspired either by travel or inner emotions, or is directly related to a literary or visual work. The 24 Préludes for piano, titled "Paysages" (Landscapes) and interpreted by Bulgarian pianist Martin Ivanov, who is based in Vienna, were composed between 1981 and 2024 and are love songs to nature, inspired by the earthy elements of Flanders; she describes the sky haunted by strong, contrasting winds, the radiant sky, and the black, fertile earth. The 24 Préludes are divided into two books—in the tradition of great predecessors like Claude Debussy, Johann Sebastian Bach, or Dmitri Shostakovich—and were created over a period of more than 40 years. Martin Ivanov has previously recorded works by Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, and Robert Schumann.