Preludes, Book II

Claude Debussy’s Préludes are a collection of 24 piano pieces composed between December 1909 and April 1913. The title refers to Frédéric Chopin’s Préludes, who gave freedom to the musical form and ennobled it by regarding the prelude as a whole, standalone work worthy of performance in its own right. Greatly inspired by Chopin’s anarchic approach to the prelude, Debussy rapidly composed a Book I and a Book II of his preludes, even drafting some of them in one day. In Book II, the composer leads his audience into a fairytale realm populated by magical creatures: among the fairies in Prélude No. 4, or else among the nymphe Ondine in  No. 8, to end with some splendid fireworks in No. 12… Debussy’s purpose, in fact, was to free the imagination of his public and, perhaps, his own self. As Debussy himself declared regarding his Estampes: “If one cannot afford to travel, one substitutes the imagination!”