The seemingly endless invention of the 24 Preludes for Piano follows the key scheme employed by Bach in The Well-Tempered Clavier through a landscape of harmonic subtlety and craftsmanship of the most refined sort.York Bowen wasa British composer whose fifty-year career musical career spanned much of the 20th century. Bowen was not only a prolific composer he was also a pianist conductor Organist Violinist and Horn player. He premiered manyimportant works and his own music was featured many times at the Proms among other concert series and he had a host of critical champions. Sir Henry J Wood for instance believed Bowen had never received proper recognition andCamille Saint-Saens regarded him as the ‘finest of English composers’ early in his career. His compositional style changed little throughout his life so that his later oeuvre was less celebrated than his earlier works as musicfashion had moved on.
