Writing beautiful music that moves, that purely exists to please, to inspire emotions, is a message in its own right.

That Wim Zwaag, in 2003, chose the form of 24 Preludes for this message is hardly surprising. Not only was it a challenge to tread the same path that admired predecessors, such as Rachmaninov, Chopin, Scriabin and Shostakovich, had taken, but it was also a perfect way to rediscover the essence of tonality, the essence of the various keys. ‘I need rules to know my freedoms and to express myself in freedom’ was Igor Stravinsky’s pat answer whenever he was asked why he curbed his own creativity with self-imposed rules.