Piano Preludes
Written in 2022 - The Preludes is available both as audio and scores and is the debut collection of piano works.
The Preludes have been frequently played on BBC sounds and Exile FM and have received great reviews and also placed Ieva Dubova to be a composer of the week of Moving Classics and the prelude - Earth was recorded by the noted german pianist - Anna Heller.
Writing the 10 piano preludes reflects Ieva's personal journey and is her first large scale work for piano- her principal instrument. Showing the composers inner world and vulnerabilities and her relationship with the instrument through the language of music. Dedicated to her grandmother a wonderful pianist and teacher - Zaiga Dubova.
Inspired by Skriabins harmonic language and the mystic chord, The preludes set off to explores internal senses to evoke the beauty of art and nature, and transcend the temporal.
They follow a path from nothing to humanity through various scenes and also evolve as compositions from providing texture to telling a story.
Recent review of the Preludes Album from - TRUST THE DOC EDITION 67 :
London-based Latvian pianist and composer Ieva Dubova has been on my radar for a while and, when the track Ethereal Dream landed in my Fresh on the Net in-box, I was instantly captivated. Now, with the arrival of the album Preludes, we get to hear the entire work from which it was taken.
What, in particular, grabbed me when I heard that initial track was the combination of Ieva’s composing skills, in which she explores the tonal and the non-tonal, bringing a lucidity to both with rich dissonances, subtle counterpoint and enticing harmonic language, and delicate, virtuosic piano playing. Preludes is an album that demonstrates these skills with consistency and scope. It is really a work that is best listened to, uninterrupted, from start to end in order to appreciate the journey in full.
Whether it’s the sparseness and striking intervallic play of Space or the darker dynamism and dissonance of Before Time, these Preludes are all stages in a journey through Ieva’s deeply thoughtful and evocative neo-impressionism and innate modernist tendencies. Her deftness of touch and attention to dynamic contrasts are key elements both in her playing and her composing. Burning teases and tempts in equal measure, the deep left hand octaves rumbling beneath exquisite extended chords. Dance with Demons meanwhile, despite its daunting title, is spritely and playful by comparison although it rises into a snarling crescendo midway into the piece. Then Towards The Light is calm, understated, giving the sense of a brief chance to come up for air before the second half of the suite ups the intensity.
Calm and Fragile lives up to its title, sparse and patient in its progress but finding room for clever scalic runs and expert use of the piano’s upper register. There is even a hint of Messiaen about some of the contrasts between light textured, high-pitched lines and the crash of deep bass notes scattered here and there. And trust me, that is not a comparison I make lightly given my well-documented reverence for the Frenchman. Vespers of the sea is especially light-textured but also carrying an air of melancholy in its nod to the Hungarian minor. Earth also begins with a delicate modality and translucent fluidity. Hints of Debussy and perhaps a little of Scriabin in the exotic harmonic language and diverse spectrum of rhythmic configurations. Ethereal Dream, introduced by a goose-bumping glissando, is especially impressionistic and has a subtle call and response between right and left hand melodic figures. The open harmonic intervals add an Eastern undercurrent. The album and suite concludes with Us, initially built upon a slowly ascending bass part and emphasised upper register tones. When Ieva swaps the two-part texture for a few chords, they are beautifully extended and mildly dissonant. As the piece progresses, the melodic currents switch between right and left hand and some delicious dissonances appear in the final section.
Ieva Dubova’s music is strikingly individual. She continually returns to quite experimental and explorative tendencies, often eschewing conventional major-minor tonality and yet retaining a bitter-sweetness through the carefully crafted linear figures, light [often two-part] textures and arpeggio-like movement and counterpoint. At the same time she makes great use of space, patiently hanging on notes and switching between a semi-serenity and dark thundering blasts of dynamic expressiveness. In all these respects she has moved on from the twentieth century obsession with the struggles between atonality and tonality and has created a language that incorporates elements of both as well as a hard-to-pinpoint modality. Not only is she an exciting and energising composer. She is also a superb exponent of her own music. All of which is why I have no hesitation in rating Preludes as one of my favourite albums so far in 2022 and I thoroughly recommend it as a shining example of contemporary classical [or art] music continuing to acknowledge its rich past as a key component in its future evolution.
To purchase physical scores head to the bandcamp link bellow for a pdf book please email - ievadubovapiano@gmail.com