Short Prelude №8 in F♯ minor (0:12)

The work belongs to Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 28, a set of short pieces for the piano, one in each of the twenty-four keys, originally published in 1839. Chopin wrote them between 1835 and 1839, partly at Valldemossa, Majorca, where he spent the winter of 1838–39 and where he had fled with George Sand and her children to escape the damp Paris weather. In Majorca, Chopin had a copy of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, and as in each of Bach’s two sets of preludes and fugues, his Op. 28 set comprises a complete cycle of the major and minor keys, albeit with a different ordering. This piece is considered one of the most difficult in the set, featuring continuous thirty-second note figuration in the right hand and semiquaver triplets (alternating with quavers) in the left hand. The entire piece employs a ceaseless figuration of polyrhythms. Its mood and theme are characterized by the snow falling, the wind screaming, the storm raging, one’s sad heart, the tempest, and desperation.

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