Rudolf Firkušný Piano Festival

Yulianna Avdeeva, winner of the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, will present at the Rudolf Firkušný Piano Festival a selection from the cycle of 24 Preludes and Fugues by Dmitri Shostakovich, which the Russian composer wrote in the early 1950s, inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier. Like the German master before him, Shostakovich wrote a prelude and fugue in each of the major and minor keys of the chromatic scale. In doing so the composer left behind one of the most significant piano cycles of the 20th century, which only a handful of pianists have in their repertoire. One of them is Yulianna Avdeeva who has performed this work or will soon perform it at the Salzburg Festival, the Chopin Festival in Warsaw, the Shostakovich Festival Leipzig, the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin or at festivals in the United States and Canada. Her appearance in Prague promises a truly unique rendition of this work.