Scafra Preludes
 Scafra Preludes

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I just downloaded your Scafra Preludes from iTunes. The music (and Aleks's playing) is brilliant, inspired, lucid, obsessive, disciplined, uncompromising and utterly mesmerising. Thank you.
 
Wissam Boustany

Thank you very much for this. It is beautifully produced... and the music is very interesting and completely convincing in its pianistic execution... The compositional method has yielded a great variety of material... my congratulations on your impressive achievement, both of you.
 
Douglas Finch

Recorded in my presence in the Rymer Auditorium, University of York, on their wonderful Fazioli piano, Aleksander Szram's world premiere recording of the complete Scafra Preludes is now available from
download sites including iTunes and Amazon and you can buy the CD from this website

Programme notes, articles and analyses here.

Prelude 1

Prelude 2

Prelude 3

Prelude 4

Prelude 5

Prelude 6

Prelude 7

Prelude 8

Prelude 9

Prelude 10

Prelude 11

Prelude 12

 
 
 
The first three [preludes] set out very contrasting moods and textures, then no. 4 is a tour de force of modal and rhythmic vitality. I liked the placement of effects in no 5, and the statuesque quality of no. 6. The unfolding of 7 is interesting, particularly when the repeated note is first absent and you are aware of new space around the changing chords. 8 and 9 have great virtuosity - 9 is madly vehement and abandoned - the big sounds are impressive even on my ghetto blaster... I liked the gentle swing of no. 10 (underlying Gymnopédie rhythm). The quotes of no. 11 were ... very entertaining... I particularly liked the way the truncated bit of the Rhapsody in Blue... makes a surprising and highly appropriate finish. 12 is quite a broad canvas, and I had the impression of a kind of summing up of different procedures.
 
   Douglas Finch