Rachmaninoff: 8 Etudes-Tableaux (Lugansky, Ashkenazy, Sofronitsky)

Rachmaninoff’s Etudes-Tableaux (study-pictures) are all miniature masterpieces. They are what impressionist music would sound like if the impressionists happened to be obsessed with counterpoint and harmony: highly concentrated tone-poems for piano. To pre-empt any queries about numbering, note that of the 9 which Rachmaninoff initially wrote, one (originally No.4) became No.6, and two which Rachmaninoff simply removed from the set (No.3 and 4 here) were published posthumously. In any case, the