Borys Lyatoshynsky’s Piano Preludes: Genre, Style, and Performance Dimensions

The article offers an integral genre-and-style as well as performance-oriented analysis of Borys Lyatoshynsky’s piano preludes, from the early works of 1914 and 1920 to the wartime cycles of the 1940s. The relevance of the study stems from the need to reconsider the place of the composer’s piano oeuvre in the history of Ukrainian modernism and from the insufficient examination of the preludes within a combined musicological and pianistic perspective. The aim of the article is to trace the evolution of the prelude genre in Lyatoshynsky’s work, to identify the leading intonational, harmonic, textural, and dramaturgical features of particular opuses, and to define the principal guidelines for their performance. The research combines historical-stylistic, intonational-dramaturgical, structural-functional, and performance-analytical approaches. It is argued that in Lyatoshynsky’s piano music the prelude moves beyond the limits of an improvisatory miniature and becomes a form of highly concentrated artistic utterance in which chamber intimacy is fused with inner monumentality and a symphonic type of development. Particular attention is paid to the Prelude of 1914 and the Mourning Prelude of 1920 as works in which the fundamental traits of the composer’s mature style are already evident: psychological depth of expression, conflict-driven image development, polyphonized texture, and the growth of thematicism from an intonational nucleus. The wartime cycles—Three Preludes op. 38, Two Preludes op. 38 bis, and Five Preludes op. 44—are interpreted as a stage of intensified symphonic piano thinking, intonational reinterpretation of Ukrainian melos, and dramaturgical cyclic organization of the small form. In the performance dimension, the article defines the major interpretive challenges: differentiation of multi-layered texture, control of harmonic verticals, vocal shaping of thematic lines, coordination of polyrhythmic processes, precise pedalling, and the projection of large-scale dramaturgical arches. The study concludes that Lyatoshynsky’s preludes constitute an integral line of his piano legacy, clearly revealing the evolution from post-Romantic expressivity toward a mature modernist idiom grounded in a distinct national intonational basis.