The transcriptions of Sergey Rachmaninoff enjoyed great respect among pianists of that time already during the composer’s lifetime. In addition to piano concertos, preludes, etudes and Variations on a Theme of Corelli, Rachmaninov’s arrangements were gradually becoming the composer’s showcase.
On the one hand, each work of this kind enables the display of purely virtuoso skills, while on the other, due to the often dense texture, it prompts us to seek a way of presenting harmonic and polyphonic consonances. This album by Ivan Shemchuk includes a collection of these piano arrangements, enriched with the popular cycle of 6 Morceaux for Four-Hands, Op. 11. © DUX Records