Description

The masterwork Flights by Timothy Bowers is a companion to the great Bach 48. Each of the twelve Preludes and Fugues embraces the full …spectrum of their tonalities. Conceived in 2023, this set is Bowers’s modern journey through the tonal landscape that pays direct homage to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier while forging its own harmonic identity. Each pair of prelude and fugue inhabits a distinct key, creating a sequential progression across all major and minor tonalities. In the preludes, Bowers explores evocative textures, atmospheric gestures, and rhythmic vitality, often evoking imagery of birds in flight or aerial vistas. The fugues demonstrate contrapuntal rigor, featuring inventive subject treatments, staggered entrances, and flourishing episodic passages. Throughout the collection, it balances structural discipline with expressive freedom, integrating extended harmonies, subtle dissonances, and moments of luminous tranquility. Performers praise its mix of technical challenge and poetic nuance. Flights invites pianists and audiences to embark on a metaphorical voyage, traversing a spectrum of moods and sonorities. Ultimately, Bowers’s Flights stands as a compelling contemporary reconsideration of Baroque traditions, affirming the enduring power of prelude and fugue in modern composition. Its blend of narrative immediacy and contrapuntal ingenuity ensures its place in the current piano repertoire and underscores Bowers’s reputation as a composer of depth and imagination.