Pavel Novák is a composer I know something about because he has been much played by the Schubert Ensemble, who were for a time resident at Cardiff University, where I teach. But broadly speaking his music is virtually unknown in the UK. When William Howard played these 24 Preludes and Fugues in St Giles' Cripplegate four years ago, hardly anyone came to hear them – perhaps not surprisingly. Obscure Czech piano music in a chilly City church in December is hardly the most enticing prospect. But now that Howard has made a brilliant, compelling recording of this 75-minute cycle, its composer’s British reputation might (or should) expand.
Now in his mid-fifties, Novák is an established figure in Prague and his native Brno, the author of five symphonies, half a dozen string quartets and a lot else. But I doubt if he has written anything quite like these preludes and fugues. In his sleeve note, David Matthews usefully compares them to Ligeti’s Études; they similarly reinvent a classical (in this case Bachian) concept in modern terms. They have the same kind of brilliance and at times the same extreme simplicity. They are clear, concentrated, limpid, exquisitely written for the piano.
Their inspiration, though, is biblical: four books, two Old Testament (individually titled), two New, where the form begins to assemble very short pieces into longer spans with overarching titles. Novák is a daring, fascinating rethinker. His fugues are rarely “fugal” (ie, complicated, multi-linear), but rather vestigial, sometimes actually unison, in one case literally a mere seven notes: a fugal ghost. The preludes are generally richer, more graphic, tending to spiral off into bravura writing. The contrasts are telling: a narrative of sorts, but one with a purely musical discourse, and an elusive spirituality.
Anyone who gets on well with Ligeti or, for a different comparison, Shostakovich’s preludes and fugues, will find Novák’s music absorbing in the same sort of way, on its own scale. This finely recorded and presented CD ought to put it on the map.
