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Are preludes supposed to be performed one after the next? Would it be okay to perform nos. 3, 6 and 9 for example? The impression that I have is that you should only perform preludes one after the next i.e. 3, 4, 5 etc... if this were true then one would have to learn all 24 preludes to perform the ones they want to play.

If you mean Chopin's Op.28 (or Shostakovich's Op.34), yes, almost all concert pianists except Sviatoslav Richter plays them as a complete set as the composer intended, from the key structure. Though amateurs often pick and choose: after all, the B flat minor (No.16) is a far cry from the 'Raindrop' that precedes it.....

Alkan's Op.31 is also usually played complete.

I see nothing wrong with programming a selection of Preludes (Chopin?), nor do I feel that they must be performed in chronological order, unless one is playing the complete set.

Regards,

Absolutely!

I think very few would object to their being selected and ordered however one might choose, provided the selecting and ordering are done reasonably well -- and in fact this can be extremely interesting, for both the performer and the audience.

I'm not sure they're 'usually' played as a complete set (as Bennevis said) but certainly it's not uncommon. Whether or not that's the more frequent thing, IMO nobody should feel discouraged from doing selections.

P.S. A little off the subject, but....one of the most interesting and moving concerts I ever went to was Chopin's complete Op. 28 combined with all the Bach Preludes from Book I -- two pianists at separate pianos alternately playing Bach Preludes and Chopin Preludes, each leading into the other of the pair and with the last note of one overlapping with the first note of the next (usually both being in the same key). IMO it worked spectacularly. We could perhaps say that "Preludes" in general invite creativity in concert design, and it is to be welcomed.

What about Debussy?

Ah, Debussy....
He may be an exception, partly because his Preludes are much longer and unrelated to what precedes and follows each particular Prelude. And he also gives each one a title, which further underlines their disparate nature.

Unlike Chopin's, where several Preludes appear to be introductions to the next one (like No.23 for No.24).

I was of course referring to the professional concert circuit, rather than competitions or amateur concerts or student recitals. I've heard the Chopin Op.28 many, many times in concert, and they're always played complete. In fact, as far as I know, Richter is (or was) the only great pianist who only ever played a selection in concert.

But there's always Chopin's Op.45 .

Perform how the music will complement each other best, rather than just following opus numbers, catalogue entries, or chronological order whenever programming anything.

I like the idea of playing them in chronological order. You could play, say, Prelude #3 by Chopin, Debussy, Shostakovich, and Messiaen, for instance.

(I may have the dates of Shostakovich and Messiaen reversed.)

It's very rare to have anything but the entire set performed in a professional recital nowadays but a selection of preludes was quite common in the 19th century. Since the OP is an amateur a selection or even a single prelude is totally fine. If playing just a couple then one should order them in some way that makes musical sense.

Very true. Chopin himself even played just the first section of his Ballade No.2 in a concert because he felt too weak to play the tempestuous sections. And in the classical era, single movements of symphonies were often played, sometimes interspersed with something lighter - something that concert-goers wouldn't tolerate these days. What did Franz Clement do to Beethoven's Violin Concerto?

That is not to say that how concert pianists of our times perform this music is also how it was meant to be performed. Let it not be forgotten that we have giants from the golden age of piano playing who found it suitable to play Chopin preludes as...yes, that's right, preludes to something else:



Not only is Busoni doing a literal repeat of the tiny A major prelude (Liszt used to do the same, but with the 2nd time being more of an echo of the first), but he's also using the theme to invent his own modulation, going straight into op 10 nr 5. As much as I'd love to see someone in recitals today do something as "daring" (though as a matter of fact such things were a common procedure roughly until the time that the recording industry started to expand), I know it won't happen among the "great pianists" of the professional concert circuit today. As common it was in those days to start a piece with a suitable "prelude" - like here, by one of the greats of the concert circuit from the old days: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX6PXkqOr0Y -, typically improvised, it is a habit that disappeared from the concert platform a long long time ago.

One doesn't have to look deeply into concert programs of this era to find that performing only selected preludes was a fairly common phenomenon. For further reading on "the art of preluding", I recommend Kenneth Hamiltons "After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance".

Yes, you're right, I have a wonderful CD of Raoul Koczalski whose Chopin playing is wholly individual - and he plays his own improvised 'prelude' to some of the works, as well as linking different works together thus. His sense of phrasing and overall flexibility is something from a bygone age. We've definitely lost a lot...

But in the case of Chopin's Preludes, I think it's a common consensus that he meant them to be played as a set when he composed them, with the ordered key structure and logical leading from one to the next, in several of the pieces.

I do think the preludes can be played in groups and as separate pieces as well. I would hardly object to hearing them this way in concert - or, indeed, as preludes to something else. Certainly, some preludes wouldn't fit entirely in such an arrangement - the F major comes to mind, with that 7th coming towards the end of the piece. It wouldn't surprise me, however, if there weren't some pianists of the past who either decided to omit the E flat while playing it as a separate piece, or how about continuing with a piece in B flat...? Why restrict ourselves to only performing the entire set...?

It's the difference between the professional and the amateur pianist, and their audiences: I'd think critics would raise an eyebrow (maybe even two, or three ) if a professional concert pianist played just a selection of the Op.28 for a paying audience today. They'd probably think - are the others too difficult for the pianist?

Argerich, for instance, in her recording runs many of the preludes into the next attacca, seemingly to make the point that she regards them as inseparable from each other, that Op.28 is 'one' work. Many other pianists I've heard in concert also do the same.

In general, Chopin's music is regarded with a reverence not applied to someone like Liszt, where octave doublings, interpolated cadenzas, rewritings etc aren't regarded as blasphemous in many of his pieces.

So it's not okay for a pro to play a few preludes, say.. 6, 7, 8 from op. 28 in a recital?

it's not accepted as the rule, may be as an exception, but it is 'not cricket, not done' to this date.

The playing of all the Preludes as a set is mostly just a tradition over the last maybe half century or so. In the 19th century(for at least 50 years after Chopin's death)it was far more common to not play the entire set.

There are occasional pro pianists today who play just a selection, and this is fairly common in all Chopin recitals. I'm pretty sure Artur Rubinstein did this.

I think it's rather silly to say that critics would assume the pianist couldn't handle all of them was the reason for only playing a selection.

From everything I've read, today's preference for playing the entire set has a lot more to do with today's fashion to play complete sets of works(both in recital and concerts)than any reverence for Chopin.

Well, nothing is black and white. Richter got away with it because he is Richter, and nobody doubted his ability to play, say, no.16 (though in fact he's never played it). But the only time when I've ever heard a pro play a single Prelude from Op.28 (of course, Op.45 is also a favorite encore as well as a stand-alone piece in concert) is as an encore, and it's usually the Raindrop or No.24. I exclude piano competitions, of course.